Top 10 College Football Helmets

This piece was originally written during the pandemic when no games were taking place and various outlets were filling their airtime by showing old games.

It turns out that when there are no sports to actually watch, we go to either watching old games or debating uniforms, both of which have been hot topics on almost all outlets of late.

With the Notre Dame media choosing to re-show the 1998 win over LSU on Saturday it got me thinking about the Tigers helmet that I had just seen getting big-time love in a “Ten Best Helmets” piece on Rivals.

There is a lot I can debate.

How is the Princeton/Delaware knockoff seen as the best?  Kidding, of course, the Michigan helmet is iconic.  Even if they stole it.

How does Oregon qualify if the Ducks never wear the same helmet two weeks in a row?

There is a team from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, that has a case to be No. 1 and it not being top 10 is laughable.

Instead, I want to focus on LSU at No. 5 for a moment.

What do you notice about the LSU headgear compared to literally everyone else on this list and if you’re familiar enough, with almost all the rest of college football?

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Do they really need to write out both the school name and have a logo of their mascot in the same helmet? The colors are fantastic together but let’s think about this for a second.

Would Notre Dame’s gold helmet be better if either “Notre Dame” or “ND” was written out and a shamrock or a leprechaun showed up below?

Or would the Alabama lid be better if they had “ALABAMA” written out and an elephant or their cursive “A” below?

Heck no to both questions.  If you made a list of the 10 worst helmets in college football, LSU would have a very strong case for number one.  How they don’t use the Tiger eye from their fifty-yard line, an iconic look in the college football world, is beyond me.

There are a lot of great helmets in college football, there really are.  It just happens that LSU doesn’t have one of them.

So how do I rank the top 10 list of best helmets???

NEXT: MY TOP 10 HELMET COUNTDOWN

LSU and Oregon are clearly bumped off while the other three I’m taking off my list from the one posted above are Arizona State, Miami, and Georgia.

LSU is gone for the noted reasons, Oregon is disqualified because they’re never consistent and Miami might have won a lot in the eighties and late nineties but what in any capacity is at all compelling about that helmet?

Georgia’s is just the Green Bay Packers helmet in different colors. Yawn.

And Arizona State has great colors but the devil spear really does nothing for me.

So who replaces them then?

Iowa‘s helmet has been a mainstay for them since 1979 and should stay forever. It’s a better black-and-yellow combination than anything Missouri or even the Pittsburgh Steelers offer.

The Wyoming Cowboys helmet needs in based on the uniqueness of the logo and the color scheme deserve love, too. Forget just the best helmet conversation, Wyoming should be on any short list of best college football uniforms.

Penn State can stay as their helmet has withstood the test of time.  It may have a limit on how high it can go on the overall rankings but that limit is still pretty high.

Alabama’s basic helmet with just the crimson base and bold white numbers simply feels like college football.

And Ohio State.  The basic silver is nothing special, sure, but factor in their Buckeye pride stickers and you’re suddenly cooking with gas.

NEXT: So how then do I rate my 10 best college football helmets?

Mandatory Credit: Brian Spurlock-USA TODAY Sports

10.  Ohio State – Again, I don’t love the basic silver but the pride stickers are the best pride stickers in college football.  That has to count for something.

Mandatory Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports

9. USC – They’re ketchup and mustard looking, sure, but like a few teams on this list, there is a good reason they haven’t been changed in a really long time:  because they’re pretty solid.

NEXT: TEAMS 7-8

Mandatory Credit: Jeff Hanisch-USA TODAY Sports

8.  Iowa – Underrated logo in collegiate sports.  Iowa messed around a lot throughout history but got it right in 1979 and shouldn’t ever change what is now a fantastic look.

Mandatory Credit: Troy Babbitt-USA TODAY Sports

7.  Wyoming – Unique logo mixed with a one-of-a-kind color scheme gets this entirely underrated look in my list.

Mandatory Credit: Rich Barnes-USA TODAY Sports

6.  Penn State – Too bland to be considered perfect but there is a reason they haven’t been changed in forever.

Mandatory Credit: Ben Queen-USA TODAY Sports

5.  Texas – A perfect case of not trying to do too much.  A great logo with a plain white background. Simple plan yet it comes out looking great.

Mandatory Credit: Michael Allio-USA TODAY Sports

4.  Michigan/Delaware/Princeton – They all use the same one with Princeton being the originator of it so I hate when it’s called the “Michigan helmet”. That said, it’s still an awesome look.  I would however lose the pride stickers in Michigan’s case – I just think they take away from the uniqueness of an otherwise star-helmet.

Mandatory Credit: John David Mercer-USA TODAY Sports

3.  Alabama – Classic in every sense of the word.  The winning doesn’t hurt anything, either.

Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

2.  Notre Dame – They had to be on here at some point, right?  Notre Dame took a classic look and in my eyes, improved it significantly when the helmets were given a new shine in 2011. Under the lights, how the Irish now play virtually every road game and usually a pair of home games each year, they especially pop.

Mandatory Credit: Melina Vastola-USA TODAY Sports

1.  Florida State – Great color scheme, great logo and outstanding pride stickers. What else can you possibly ask from a helmet, besides it to not be of a team that stole the 1993 national championship.

Story originally appeared on Fighting Irish Wire