The 2025 college football season started last weekend. Thousands of fans will file into stadiums across the Country every weekend for the next few months to watch their favorite collegiate team battle for the prestige of being called “The Winner.” Because of fan enthusiasm, college sports have become a multimillion dollar industry. The most recent evidence of that fact are the large sums paid to players by sponsors, in the name of the university, for the use of the player’s Name, Image and Likeness (“NIL“). The player in return promotes the university and sponsor’s product or service.

NIL was approved by the NCAA in 2021. Unfortunately, it is unlikely today’s players know about the player who was somewhat of a forerunner of NIL. A hundred and one years before the NCAA instituted NIL, a college football player by the name of Benjamin Russell, Jr., a quarterback on the University of Alabama football team, initiated his own business venture that arguably was a developmental step in the evolution of the modern football uniform.

By 1920, the development of the wool football jersey had advanced very little from its early creation in the late 1800s. Benjamin Russell, Jr., had a strong aversion to the itchy wool fabric

that also caused chafing. What’s more, the wool jersey absorbed and held moisture and would open holes in the yarn when pulled with any force. Unlike other players, Russell had an appreciation and knowledge of fabrics he gained from his father’s business. Russell’s father happened to be a manufacturer of women’s and children’s knit garments in Alexander City, Alabama. Together, the father and son team developed the first cotton football jersey by restructuring the top of a ladies union suit.

You are wondering, “What, for heaven’s sake, was/is a union suit?”

“Created in Utica, New York, . . . [the union suit] originated as women’s wear during the 19th-century United States clothing reform efforts, as an alternative to constricting garments, and soon gained popularity among men as well.” Historians do not agree on the etymology of the name union suit. Some say it evolved from the union of the top and bottom of other garments. Others believe the name came from the “Union Army” during the Civil War, while some claim it is from an unknown older brand. The union suit is more commonly known today by the colloquial name long johns.

Whatever the origins of the name union suit, over a century later the Russell Manufacturing Company continues to produce and sell athletic apparel, all an outgrowth of that simple evolutionary garment created in 1920. Known today as Russell Athletic, it is no longer based in Alabama, but headquartered in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and currently a subsidiary of Fruit of the Loom.

It is worth looking back to appreciate how far football uniforms have come and the evolution of the woolen college jersey and sweater compared to today’s football uniforms and logoed sweatshirt.

The photo of Fielding H. Yost, a football player at Lafayette College and a long time (1901-1923/1925-1926) coach at the University of Michigan, shows him wearing his undergraduate Lafayette College wool sweater.

It wasn’t until 1935 that the first synthetic fiber, nylon, was developed by DuPont and it was not until 1941 that British chemists developed the first fully synthetic fiber, polyester. Today’s football uniform fabrics are primarily polyester and elastane, also called spandex or Lycra, making them lightweight, breathable, and moisture-wicking. They are a far cry from the wool uniform worn in the infancy of football.

This soupçon of college football history should end with the modern Princeton University football jersey and sweatshirt. Princeton University and Rutgers University, both New Jersey universities, played the first American college football game in 1869.

Do you have a player’s jersey or logoed sweatshirt?