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Helmet stickers reward college football players' superior performance
Enlarge By Matthew Emmons, US Presswire
Ohio State receiver Ted Ginn Jr.'s helmet is adorned with dozens of stickers. Coach Jim Tressel has rewarded his junior receiver for his playmaking ability, which includes seven touchdown receptions this season.
By Jeff Rabjohns, The Indianapolis Star
Doug Jones looked a few weeks ago and counted. Fifteen stickers of University of Cincinnati's C-paw logo adorned his black helmet.
"As a player in high school, I always looked up to the colleges that had stickers," the junior fullback from Erlanger, Ky., said. "I thought, man, it'd be cool to have them. Now that we have them, it's a great feeling."
Cincinnati began giving helmet stickers this fall, joining others in one of the college football's endearing traditions of awarding decals to players or units who make great plays and meet team goals.
Former Ohio State coach Woody Hayes is the accepted pioneer, devising the idea along with trainer Ernie Biggs in 1968.
Helmet stickers, or pride stickers as they're called in some locales, were born.
"Those Buckeye leaves are tradition. That sums it up," said Ohio State product
Ben Hartsock, an Ohio native and former Indianapolis Colts tight end who was picked up by Tennessee this week. "Every kid growing up, whatever era he came through, their idol had Buckeye leaves, if it was Archie Griffin, Eddie George or
Craig Krenzel. As a child growing up, those Buckeye leaves meant success.
"I remember getting my first one. They were always team-oriented. It was never a competitive thing, it was just kind of something that the team knew that if you're helmet was getting full, the team was doing well."
Today, Ohio State gives them out for key performances on special teams, offense or defense. Coach Jim Tressel's website ? available for $49.95 per year ? keeps a complete list of how many Buckeye leaves each player has won and the criteria for winning them.
"I think it's something that has been stored here for quite some time," Tressel said. "The size of the leaf has changed. The criteria of how you get them has changed many, many times.
"I think it's something our guys take pride in, not so much to display on their helmet but seeing how many they can accumulate."
JoePa not interested
While few images shout "college football" as loud as Ohio State's silver helmet smothered in buckeye leaves, the tradition seems to be diminishing.
Colorado stopped awarding buffalo logos this season. No team in the Pac-10 does it. Dan Marino and Tony Dorsett earned stickers at Pitt, but current players don't. Michigan? Nothing.
Arizona used to award them as well, but a school spokesman said they stopped because safety Chuck Cecil collected so many big cat claws for vicious hits that his helmet "looked stupid."
And nobody has dared to put anything on Joe Paterno's clean, white headgear, except the lone blue stripe down the middle.
"I've never been for that stuff," Paterno said. "That's why we've never had names on uniforms because nobody achieves anything without the others.
"But that's our style, and that's the great thing about college football. Everybody's a little different. You've got 119 Division I-A schools, and they've all got ways to get things done. Everybody's a little different, and that's great."
Dooley and dog bones
Several Southern schools have followed former Georgia coach Vince Dooley, who gave out the first dog bone in 1971.
Clemson awards a paw print. North Carolina State gives out a blood-tipped wolf's fang. East Carolina, a pirate skull. Vanderbilt pastes small black ship anchors on its helmets.
Louisiana-Lafayette prefers a cajun pepper that appears as the apostrophe in its nickname Ragin' Cajuns.
Dooley got the idea after he and former Michigan coach Bo Schembechler conducted a series of football clinics at military bases in Europe. Dooley noticed the military medals awarded for outstanding service and thought there could be a correlation to football.
"The general idea was for it to be an incentive program where you reward individuals and teams based on performance and certain things like blocking a kick or making an interception," Dooley said by phone from his office overlooking the Georgia practice facility.
Dooley even added a special twist, a bone for a game-winning or game-saving play.
"It was received more than well," Dooley said. "They really took pride in having stars on their headgear. If they didn't get one, they'd let an assistant or equipment guy know if they felt they deserved one."
Georgia now gives out a white bone for football excellence and a black one for academics.
The criteria for earning a helmet sticker varies greatly, but most schools only award them after a victory.
Purdue previously used train logos, but switched to Purdue Pete stickers this year.
"It's a fun thing to have," Purdue receiver Greg Orton said. "It's almost like a contest. Some guys get fired up for it. For other guys, it's just another thing. But it's fun to have."
Colts defensive end
Dwight Freeney remembers earning performance decals as far back as high school, when he was an All-American at Bloomfield, Conn.
His team was the Warhawks, and he received Hawks for sacks or fumble recoveries.
"That basically lets everybody know that, 'This guy is a baller. He's been doing a lot of something,'" Freeney said. "My helmet was all filled. They were everywhere. You just tried to get the most stickers everywhere."