Teams tweaking their standard uniforms is commonplace in today’s NFL. Apart from special alternate jerseys, throwback unis, and Color Rush combos, some teams tend to reinvent their uniforms as often as they’re allowed. A bigger helmet logo here, a flashy new number font there, a trendy matte finish to top things off. All-white. All-black. Maybe a sublimated pattern in the background or some extra swirls and stripes around the edges. It all makes for hype-worthy reveal videos on Twitter and certainly provides teams a boost when it comes to merchandising revenue.
But can you imagine a franchise just adding an entirely new out-of-left-field color that has nothing to do with their official on-the-field uniform, one of the most recognizable in all of sports, for an entire season simply because ownership wants to get in on a pop culture movement? This is the story of the year the Dallas Cowboys wore blue, white… and red.
The United States celebrated the 200th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence in 1976. Plans for how the country might formally commemorate the Bicentennial had actually begun a full 10 years prior. Originally planned as a large exposition to be staged in either Boston or Philadelphia, the significance of the nation’s birthday seemed to grow exponentially in the hearts and minds of mainstream America as the date drew closer.
By the time New Year’s Day arrived that year, patriotism had reached a near-fever pitch from coast to coast. Watergate and Vietnam were in the past and a new American spirit was at hand. A red, white, and blue train was making a whistle-stop tour across the lower 48 states. Fireworks shows and parades were being planned in major cities. Historic tall ships from around the world docked in American harbors. Collectible coins were minted. Mailboxes and fire hydrants across the country got patriotic paint jobs from local citizens. The 1976 movie Rocky featured nods to the Bicentennial, dressing Apollo Creed’s character as George Washington and then Uncle Sam on fight night. Commercial products in stores were rewrapped in star-spangled packaging.
As one of the first major cultural events to take place in the Bicentennial year, Super Bowl X — played in Miami on January 18 — included its own special acknowledgement. That day, both the Cowboys and Steelers wore an honorary uniform patch featuring the official Bicentennial logo: a stylized red, white, and blue star designed by the man who also came up with NASA’s logo.
Super Bowl X proved to be the only time the patch was worn during an NFL game. The league decided against including it on teams’ uniforms for the 1976 season. With Bicentennial celebrations having culminated on July 4, enthusiasm had waned considerably by the time the regular season kicked off in September.
But not everyone was ready to snuff out the country’s birthday candles and declare the party over so quickly. The Dallas Cowboys had something subtle but special planned for 1976. It remains one of the quirkiest footnotes in the team’s illustrious history.
A tiny blurb in the July 30, 1976 edition of the Los Angeles Times is perhaps the first public mention of what was to come. Under a heading reading “Fashion note” printed in bold type, the Times reported, citing a league memo:
“In honor of America’s Bicentennial, the Cowboys will change one the blue stripes running down the center of their helmets to red for one season only.”
Yes, for the duration of the 1976 season, the Cowboys’ official uniform was red, white, and blue.
According the book Glory Days: Life with the Dallas Cowboys, 1973-1998 by the team’s longtime equipment manager William T. “Buck” Buchanan, the idea was pure Tex Schramm. The visionary team president and general manager was never one to miss an opportunity to promote the Dallas Cowboys brand by tapping into whatever was new and popular. If the country was crazy for the stars and stripes, the Cowboys would be a part of it. After all, they already had the stars.
The team’s first two preseason games in 1976 were in Oakland and Los Angeles, explaining why an L.A. paper may have broken the news of the uniform modification. Californians were perhaps the first to see the unusual color combo on the Cowboys’ trademark helmets, but the striping scheme quickly made an impression on everyone else, too.
Buchanan tells the following story:
“During a preseason game with the Pittsburgh Steelers, Cowboy tackle Ralph Neely was asked by the opposing Pittsburgh lineman, ‘How long have you been wearing that red stripe on your helmets?’
“The ball was snapped, and Ralph knocked his man on his butt.
“Ralph turned to walk back to the huddle and fired over his shoulder, ‘First year, but we may keep wearing ’em.'”
Dallas did keep wearing them, and the distinct red stripe makes any photo from the 1976 season instantly identifiable as such.
The Eagles seem to be the only other team in the league to commemorate the Bicentennial with any sort of wardrobe alteration. Their uniforms from that season featured a small sleeve patch picturing the Liberty Bell with the number 76 cleverly woven into the design.
Of course, in today’s NFL, there are jersey patches and helmet decals worn for a wide variety of reasons. Often, they’re league-wide efforts worn by every team, such as the patches that commemorated the NFL’s 100th season or the pink ribbons (and accessories) worn during October to salute breast cancer research and survivorship, to name just two.
Similarly, individual teams frequently honor former players, coaches, or front office personnel with a special uniform feature to mark the occasion of their passing. Other notable events can get the one-time patch treatment, too. The Cowboys, for example, sported single-game uniform tweaks for their 2014 game played in London, the first game played in Cowboys Stadium in 2009, and the final game played at Texas Stadium in 2008.
But what the Cowboys did for the entirety of the 1976 season to mark the nation’s 200th birthday stands nearly alone in the annals of football history.
Bill Schaefer of the wonderfully exhaustive website The Gridiron Uniform Database was able to think of just two other occurrences where a lone team went rogue for a whole season and used a wardrobe change to call attention to a non-football movement.
Schaefer pointed out that the 1945 Cleveland Rams, in their final season before relocating to Los Angeles, wore a sleeve patch depicting an eagle perched inside a red, white, and blue capital C. “The patch was said to have been worn in support of the war effort,” Schaefer noted in an email exchange with Cowboys Wire.
The Rams were also the sole club to don a special drug abuse awareness patch for a portion of the 1988 season, according to Schaefer, “in conjunction with President Reagan’s ‘War on Drugs'” initiative.
But much has changed in the years since then, and the NFL has taken monumental steps toward streamlining their behemoth of a brand. It is nearly impossible to imagine a solo team in today’s league altering their uniform to the point of adding a new color to their trademarked palette just to take part in the zeitgeist moment of the day. In the present-day NFL, such a uniform modification would be either an official mandate across all 32 teams with stringently enforced rules on its appearance, placement, and usage, or it wouldn’t be allowed at all.
[Note: Just this week, the NFL has entered into discussions with players regarding the possibility of helmet decals or jersey patches recognizing those impacted by systemic racism and police brutality for the 2020 season, according to a report. The decision to wear a decal or patch could be left up to individual players, or teams could choose to act as a whole.]
The Cowboys, though, have always had a reputation around the league as a maverick organization. Even in those days, they did things their own way.
Of the Bicentennial patches worn by Dallas and Pittsburgh in Miami in January of ’76, Buchanan recalls in his book:
“Before Super Bowl X, the league issued written instructions dictating where to sew the Bicentennial patch on our jerseys.
“‘What do you think, Buck?’ Mr. Schramm asked.
“‘Could be distracting to the quarterback,’ I replied.
“‘Damned right,’ he said. ‘Put the patch on the jersey sleeve.’
“‘The NFL letter says to put the patch on the upper left breast,’ I said.
“‘No sir,’ he said. ‘Put it on the sleeve.’
“‘But the letter was signed by Pete Rozelle,’ I insisted.
“‘Buck, listen to me,’ Tex insisted, ‘put the patch where I told you to put it.'”
The Steelers wore the patch on their upper left breast, as ordered. The Cowboys wore it on their left sleeve. Not a word of reprimand came down from the league office.
“Tex and NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle were friends,” Buchanan astutely notes.
During the regular season that followed, the Cowboys’ decision to independently add a red stripe to one of the most recognized pieces of gear in sports somehow wasn’t as big a deal as it seems now. Maybe that’s simply because we live in an age where it almost certainly would never be authorized to begin with.
Paul Lukas runs the exceptional website Uni Watch, dedicated to the aesthetics and history of sports uniforms. He has singled out the ’76 red stripe as one of the top ten quirks of the one of the most iconic uniforms in all of sports, right up there with the Cowboys’ famously mismatched blues, silvers that aren’t quite silver, and retro Dymo Tape nameplates.
Of the Bicentennial stripe, Lukas told Cowboys Wire:
“It’s the type of thing that would get a huge amount of attention if a team did it now, but it kind of flew under the radar in 1976 and for some reason, never became a high-profile part of the team’s timeline or story. Definitely fits in with the whole ‘America’s Team’ thing, though.”
Ah, yes. The Patriots and their Boston-based fans appropriately wear red, white, and blue every season, of course. But if any team was going to play up the stars and stripes factor as a one-off for the country’s 200th birthday celebration, of course it would be “America’s Team.”
Except here’s the thing about that. In 1976, no one had yet called the Cowboys “America’s Team.” That nickname didn’t happen until 1979, well after the year-long celebration and Dallas’s red-striped headgear. NFL Films invented that particular moniker, making it the title of the Cowboys’ team highlight video recapping their 1978 season.
So the Old Glory-inspired uniform tweak might have- at least subconsciously- helped give birth to the “America’s Team” nickname in the minds of those NFL Films editors two years later. But despite the conspiracy theory many opposing teams’ fans cling to as absolute (and ever-nauseating) truth, the red stripe flat-out couldn’t have been the Cowboys’ attempt to rub their better-than-thou handle in the faces of the rest of the league.
Although the ’76 Cowboys finished that Bicentennial season with a record of 11-3 and the NFC East title, they lost in the playoffs to the Rams, keeping the unique red, white, and blue-striped helmets from ever making a Super Bowl appearance.
When the team next took the field, it was 1977. The Bicentennial was history, and the red stripe was gone. Today, the Cowboys’ contribution to the Spirit of ’76 exists only in those old photographs, a scant few collectibles still floating around, and the memories of long-time fans.
The Bicentennial helmets do claim a small bit of the spotlight at The Star in Frisco today, though. Largely forgotten by the modern era, the ’76 uniforms are enough of an item of historical interest that they feature in an exhibit showcasing the team’s uniforms throughout the years. There’s a mannequin front and center wearing Roger Staubach’s No. 12 jersey and his signature double-bar facemask, with a bright red stripe running down the center of the helmet. It’s a popular photo stop on the facility’s fan tours, and the red stripes make a good trivia question that the guides like to use to stump their groups.
In a 2018 poll, the Dallas Morning News offered up six uniforms from Cowboys history and asked readers to choose the best of all time. The 1976 red-stripe version came in dead last, with just 4% of the total vote.
For those that do remember the Bicentennial helmets fondly, though, it remains a beloved footnote in Cowboys history. Maybe because it was so subtle and quirky, maybe because they were the only ones to do it, maybe because they did it on their own, maybe because they never did it again, maybe because it would never happen now. It lives on as one of those little-known factoids that can win a bar bet or score points in a trivia contest, and it certainly helps true old-school fans size each other up with a knowing smile and a sly head nod.
But should the team decide to break out the red stripes one more time for the nation’s Semiquincentennial in 2026, it will be just about the coolest thing to ever happen to a whole bunch of nostalgic 50-something Cowboys fanatics.
You can follow Todd on Twitter @ToddBrock24f7.
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