South Florida Football Helmets: A History

Although the University of South Florida is a large public university with almost 50,000 students, it did not have a soccer team until 1997. It started its team in 1997 in Division 1-AA (now called the Championship Soccer Subdivision) and it was promoted to Division 1-A (now called Football Bowl Subdivision) in 2001. Surprisingly, in this short time of playing soccer, the program has been ranked # 2 in the nation, awarded at an automatic qualifying conference (Big East), played in several bowls and beat Notre Dame.

The football helmet was originally gold with a green mask. It had a bull’s head sticking out of a green square. The lower part of the bull’s head had a black shadow and you see its eyes; however, its main focus was the protruding horns, the mouth, and the snout. Frankly, it looked like something you could see in the USFL, Arena League Football, or NFL-Europe. It wasn’t their prototypical NCAA football helmet that often, but not always, has some lettering or design features that highlight the school’s name and not just the mascot. The logo was transformed into the current U logo, which is shaped like a bull’s head. This logo has been in use since 2003. The U is not connected at the top of the bull’s head. It starts with one horn, goes down the bull’s head on one side, goes through the muzzle, goes up the other side of the bull’s head, and exits the other horn. The original U was light to medium green in color with a black outline that came after leaving a gap from the gold background around the bull’s head. This was changed in 2005 to a black U, and subsequently changed back to a dark green. USF experimented with a white background and a green U and a green vertical stripe in late 2008 at the St. Petersburg Bowl game and then selectively used it in 2009 and most of 2010. Once in 2010, it returned to the gold helmet. .

With the start of 2011, the USF Bulls have three helmet options. All three helmets feature the familiar U logo. Options include a dark green helmet with a gold U outlined in white, a gold helmet with a dark green U outlined in white, and a white helmet with dark green and gold stripes plus a dark green U outlined in gold. All three football helmets have the familiar dark green mask. The dark green helmet will go down in history as the one the USF wore when they defeated Notre Dame on September 3, 2011. The U logo has been in use since 2003 and, apart from a slight reduction in size in 2005, has been identical of course. The trend for many football helmets, and South Florida is no different, is to have more than one style of helmet and occasionally to wear different ones for special occasions like a game of bowling. It will be interesting to see what the South Florida football helmet will look like in the future.