Letterman Jackets

High school is an important time in most of our lives. Most of us have our glory days there where we didn't continue with sports after going on to college or careers and leaving sports behind as more of a spectator. But one thing always remained constant is the letterman check. Now we're going to go back to the past to learn more about this iconic sports wick. Welcome to Daily Sports History. I'm Ethan Reese, your guide to a rapid deep dive into sports history. Every day in the hallowed halls of academia. In sportsmanship is a tradition that was born the tradition of the letterman, better known today as the letterman check beyond the touchdowns, the three pointers, and some schools have broadened the concept of the letterman to include academics and arts and more. But what goes into the design of this How did it all start? What makes this iconic jacket the same at almost every school in the country. We all know the jacket mainly a wool vest air like area with leather sleeves and patches on the side showing when we graduate in our different accomplishments, showing the sports we are involved in or the other activities showing our school pride on the chest usually over the heart is the emblem of the school, and having the vest area be predominantly the school colors. We all know the jacket, but where did it come from? We take a look back at Harvard in eighteen sixty five. They are just starting a sports to be played in colleges, more like innermural teams today rather than the NCAA teams that we know and watch every year. But it does have long journey to where it became what it is today that is considered a prestigious honor because you don't just buy a Letterman jacket. You earn it and you have badgists to show what you've accomplished by either yourself or your team. So at Harvard University, their baseball team at the time was just a group of students who took a sweater and sewed a large ah, which was actually also their uniform. This was the beginning of the Letterman jacket, and in fact, you were only allowed to wear the h if you were playing in the gate. Players that were on the bench weren't allowed to wear their Letterman jacket their Letterman sweater until they were actually in the game. So to show who actually played and who did not. In eighteen ninety one, they begin to wear black jerseys off the field to distinguish a large on their chest, and this was when they would be called letterman as these pullover cardigans signifying who was on the team and who was playing, and started to create that love for the teams, and the early nineteen hundreds football teams began the same tradition putting a large h on their chest as well, and those who did not play did not keep them. Only the players who were participating actually got to keep them, and as they played more and more teams and more and more colleges, they adopted the same idea for their schools. Each time some team played, this would grow the popularity of the letterman, and each school adopted a different way of doing it to signified captains or stars on their team, giving them ranks for their own schools. In nineteen thirty, what we now known as the varsity jacket was introduced. Athletes were demanding a heavier cloth to combat the cold, and leather sleeves for the buttons they would add to their jerseys. As many of these schools that participated were up in the winter areas and playing football in the cold was not a fun experience. And it wasn't long before all the IVY schools Harvard, Yale, Penn, Princeton, Columbia, Brown, Dartmouth, and Cornell all participated in the Letterman jacket, and as we all noted today, high schools copy pros and colleges. As high schools saw more colleges doing this, they wanted to get in on the action. Great way to bring alumni back and people to have school spirit all the time. As the years passed on, the jacket even traversed academia and exploded in popularity, with famous musical artists such as Michael Jackson wearing Letterman jackets as well, and having leatherman jackets for national teams such as the Raiders, the Knicks, and the Celtics. It's an interesting event in fashion where something has never gone out of style. The Letterman jacket has been around for years and still is relatively the same as it was when it first started. Since of school pride and honor to wear the jacket to this day. Thank you for listening to the day's daily sports history. If you enjoyed this, please give us a like or follow wherever you're listening, and come back tomorrow for more daily sport history.