The Green Bay Packers are an NFL team with an especially rich history, dating back to their founding in 1919. Because the team is so established, many early memories are confined to black and white due to the limitations of early photography. While these early photos are still cherished by fans (and have a certain charm to them), the black and white does still hold us modern fans back from really taking in the details of what these moments would have been like for fans at the time. Wouldn’t it be a treat to experience these early memories in color?
They Played in Color brings Color to Green Bay Packers Photo
They Played in Color is an organization working to do exactly that: bringing modern sports fans a more vivid experience of the past by colorizing historic photographs. On their website, They Played in Color shares their mission statement, describing their goals and process:
We bring sports history to life with photos fully restored and in color, like never seen before. Through determination, skill, patience, research, and attention to detail, we rescue faded, scratched, and dusty images and breath life into history. Grass has always been green, the sky blue – see history as it was. In color.
Their description may at first feel overly romantic, but at least for Packers fans, it becomes easy to understand how their work is “breathing life into history” when viewing their latest social media post: a colorized version of a photograph taken of the Green Bay Packers in 1930.
Football season is in full swing now and we will be introducing quite a few new releases in the coming days. We start with the 1930 NFL Champion Green Bay Packers! The legendary Curly Lambeau stands at the far right of the image. @NFL_Journal @79_nfl @ProFootballHOF @PackersHOF… pic.twitter.com/cK34sVpArX
— They Played In Color Galleries (@TPICGalleries) September 30, 2024
As the post states, Green Bay Packers founder and Lambeau Field namesake Earl Louis “Curly” Lambeau stands at the far right of the photograph, posing with the rest of the team. For a long time Packers fan like myself, it’s great to be able to put a fully colorized face to the famous name!
Most striking about the addition of color to this historic photograph is the color of the uniforms. While many NFL fans most likely associate the Packers with their iconic dark green, gold and white uniforms, these were not the original colors of the team. According to the Packers Fandom Wiki, Lambeau first borrowed navy blue and gold from his alma mater, the University of Notre Dame, for the Packers, explaining the colors in the photograph. The Packers were even sometimes referred to as the “Blues” in these early days. However, upon Lambeau’s departure in 1949, the official colors were changed to mustard yellow and hunter green in order to emphasize the “green” in “Green Bay Packers.”
While this particular photograph is exciting for Packers fans, They Played in Color is not limited to Packers photos, or even to the NFL. Scrolling through their X page will reveal colorized versions of a variety of different sports teams and notable sports figures. Something that is often included in TPIC posts, but absent in the post about the 1930 Packers Championship, is the original black and white photograph, which I think is a shame. Having the original photograph of the Packers and Curly Lambeau side-by-side with the new, colorized version would be a great contrast to see how much difference the color really makes. Not to mention that including the original is also a great way to preserve and celebrate the work of the original photographer. I hope to see both more original and colorized versions of Green Bay Packers history from They Played in Color in the future.
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