Dumb things you never realized for years...

[JWL]

When did that custom change? When I was was in elementary school (1950s) wearing a hat indoors (for a boy) was the worst thing you could do. My wife still gets upset if our grandson wears his indoors.

I'm not sure it was a custom for my generation (born 1983) but I learned it through football. Our DC in high school explained it to us and the upperclassmen reminded players all the time, too. Never think too much of it but kind of funny now thinking about when we get together and go in somewhere how all of us take off our hats -- and if we're with someone who didn't play football they probably stand out since they likely don't know what we're doing. Ever since I was 14 years old I take off my hat when I enter a building. Not something I think about, natural/automatic to me.

It was not like that in my high school. Jon Bon Jovi even showed up one day at practice (yes, I went to the same high school as him but 15 years later) and gave hats to all the players. I was on the freshman team. Hats could be worn by any students in classrooms. Probably 30-50% of the boys wore hats in school with no difference between football players and non-football players.

[Jay Z]

The Penguins started out wearing blue white and black (maybe a little yellow in the logo too) and did so for many years. They changed to Black and Gold (yellow) exclusively some years later when it was sort of realized that the other two teams wore those colors and they could make it a city-wide practice. Might have been fan or civic encouragement to do so, don't recall now all these years later.

It would be interesting to know what colors the old ABA basketball teams the Pipers (1st League Champions) and Condors wore during their Pittsburgh days.

Blue and Orange, then Red and Gold.

[Ronfitch]

Bum Phillips would typically wear a cowboy hat for road games but never for home games. The reason for this was that Bum felt it rude to wear a hat inside

When did that custom change? When I was was in elementary school (1950s) wearing a hat indoors (for a boy) was
the worst thing you could do. My wife still gets upset if our grandson wears his indoors.

I am a generation younger than you, John, and it was custom to remove a hat when indoors when/where I grew up as well. However, we certainly did not have the sheer number and variety of hats I would guess most kids that age now have.

And, though my dad did a short enlistment in a peace-time military in the '50s (I think it was two years active, three years or fewer reserve), he was in the middle of about a 30-35 year period of when a large proportion of the male population between 18 and 24 served. I recall him saying that failing to remove your hat when entering indoors and putting it on when exiting would get you chewed on. The habits developed there die hard. Many if not most of my male teachers and coaches in the '70s and early '80s either served or were sons of WWII vets. I can't help but wonder if their drilled-in hat etiquette was also part of our expected hat etiquette.

[Rupert Patrick]

I am a generation younger than you, John, and it was custom to remove a hat when indoors when/where I grew up as well. However, we certainly did not have the sheer number and variety of hats I would guess most kids that age now have.

And, though my dad did a short enlistment in a peace-time military in the '50s (I think it was two years active, three years or fewer reserve), he was in the middle of about a 30-35 year period of when a large proportion of the male population between 18 and 24 served. I recall him saying that failing to remove your hat when entering indoors and putting it on when exiting would get you chewed on. The habits developed there die hard. Many if not most of my male teachers and coaches in the '70s and early '80s either served or were sons of WWII vets. I can't help but wonder if their drilled-in hat etiquette was also part of our expected hat etiquette.

And he no doubt came from a generation of men who wore hats, as opposed to ball caps. It is said that the practice of men wearing hats went out with JFK, who disliked hats, and it wasn't much longer after that the practice of men wearing suits in public started to fall out of favor. Back in those days, every adult male owned a suit, no matter how poor they were. My father was from that generation (which was so well captured in the TV series "Mad Men") and wore a suit or at least a blazer jacket and suit pants and dress shirt and tie to work every day.

If you watch any old film of aduit men at baseball or football games in the 40's and 50's, and 60's, it was all men in suits. You never saw any adult fans at Packers game in the 60's wearing a Packers ball cap or a Starr or Nitschke jersey. I know if you went thru NFL Films This Week in Pro Football episodes you would probably be able to pinpoint the exact moment at which this began when adults wearing jerseys to games became fashionable. I suspect it might have been late in the 1972 season in Pittsburgh (when the Steelers fans started up all their player fan clubs like Gerela's Gorillas and Franco's Italian Army) but I could be wrong.

[Reaser]

It was not like that in my high school. Jon Bon Jovi even showed up one day at practice (yes, I went to the same high school as him but 15 years later) and gave hats to all the players. I was on the freshman team. Hats could be worn by any students in classrooms. Probably 30-50% of the boys wore hats in school with no difference between football players and non-football players.

Yup, I don't think it was a 'thing' for our generation. We were allowed to wear hats in school starting in middle school and I wore a hat every day 7th and 8th grade. It was just specifically our defensive coordinator in high school - which Ron's point about military adds up since he served, as did his son. Same percentage probably wore hats in my high school, it was less a team thing (such as wearing our jerseys to school on Friday's) and more that it got ingrained in us that it was the respectable thing to do. And it's stuck with us since. For example, and only thinking about it now in retrospect, I was wearing my Seahawks hat to a restaurant the other night and as soon as I got to the door I took it off.

[sheajets]

I am a generation younger than you, John, and it was custom to remove a hat when indoors when/where I grew up as well. However, we certainly did not have the sheer number and variety of hats I would guess most kids that age now have.

And, though my dad did a short enlistment in a peace-time military in the '50s (I think it was two years active, three years or fewer reserve), he was in the middle of about a 30-35 year period of when a large proportion of the male population between 18 and 24 served. I recall him saying that failing to remove your hat when entering indoors and putting it on when exiting would get you chewed on. The habits developed there die hard. Many if not most of my male teachers and coaches in the '70s and early '80s either served or were sons of WWII vets. I can't help but wonder if their drilled-in hat etiquette was also part of our expected hat etiquette.

And he no doubt came from a generation of men who wore hats, as opposed to ball caps. It is said that the practice of men wearing hats went out with JFK, who disliked hats, and it wasn't much longer after that the practice of men wearing suits in public started to fall out of favor. Back in those days, every adult male owned a suit, no matter how poor they were. My father was from that generation (which was so well captured in the TV series "Mad Men") and wore a suit or at least a blazer jacket and suit pants and dress shirt and tie to work every day.

If you watch any old film of aduit men at baseball or football games in the 40's and 50's, and 60's, it was all men in suits. You never saw any adult fans at Packers game in the 60's wearing a Packers ball cap or a Starr or Nitschke jersey. I know if you went thru NFL Films This Week in Pro Football episodes you would probably be able to pinpoint the exact moment at which this began when adults wearing jerseys to games became fashionable. I suspect it might have been late in the 1972 season in Pittsburgh (when the Steelers fans started up all their player fan clubs like Gerela's Gorillas and Franco's Italian Army) but I could be wrong.

Fuqua's Foreign Legion

There just flat out wasn't as much memorabilia to consume then as there is now.

Even well into the 80's when football games had long since stopped being suited events...you still had the vast majority of fans in the stadium in comfortable plain clothes with no team merchandise.

[BD Sullivan]

Even well into the 80's when football games had long since stopped being suited events...you still had the vast majority of fans in the stadium in comfortable plain clothes with no team merchandise.

Then again, sports leagues were ignorant for many years about licensing things like uniforms for fans to buy, etc. Their belief was that those fans "didn't have the right" to wear these items because they weren't on the team.

[JohnH19]

Even well into the 80's when football games had long since stopped being suited events...you still had the vast majority of fans in the stadium in comfortable plain clothes with no team merchandise.

Then again, sports leagues were ignorant for many years about licensing things like uniforms for fans to buy, etc. Their belief was that those fans "didn't have the right" to wear these items because they weren't on the team.

NFL Properties changed that mindset in the 60s when they started merchandising the heck out of the league. As mentioned above, however, wearing team gear to games didn't become standard fare probably until 25-30 years ago. Even then, it had a long way to go to get to today's levels of fandemonium.

[Todd Pence]

Bum Phillips played road games in domes in New Orleans in 1976 and '78, Seattle in '77 and '79, and against his former team Houston in '81 and '84. Wonder if he doffed the hat for those games as well.

[fgoodwin]

Bum Phillips would typically wear a cowboy hat for road games but never for home games. The reason for this was that Bum felt it rude to wear a hat inside

When did that custom change? When I was was in elementary school (1950s) wearing a hat indoors (for a boy) was
the worst thing you could do. My wife still gets upset if our grandson wears his indoors.

I still remove my hat when I go indoors to my office. I notice the guys who do wear hats almost always keep them on. I have no idea when the custom changed, but it really isn't the "custom" anymore (I'm 62).