Why is there an NFL team without a logo on their helmet? The story behind the most iconic design
Of the 32 teams in the NFL, there is only one franchise that refuses to add its logo to its helmet.
This week, the Cleveland Browns are set to unveil a new alternate option to their iconic orange helmet. And, while speculation abounds about the color of the change shell for the 2025 season, one thing seems certain. It will not include the team’s logo.
Of the 32 franchises in the NFL, the Browns are the only team that has no logo on its helmet. This has been a constant since the Ohio organization was founded back in 1944.
Orange, “Oreo” stripe, no logo
It is a stance that has endured for only marginally longer than the Browns’ commitment to the famous orange. As ClevelandBrowns.com’s Andrew Gribble explains, the team wore both all-white and all-orange helmets during its initial years, before settling on the latter in 1952.
At the start of the 60s, the Browns then added a white stripe running down the middle of the shell, flanked by two black stripes. That has been Cleveland’s helmet design of choice ever since: a solid orange background, complemented by the “Oreo” stripe.
The Browns only began deviating from that look as recently as two years ago, after an NFL rule change allowed teams to introduce an alternate shell to go with their change uniforms. In Week 2 of the 2023 campaign, Cleveland wore white helmets against the Steelers, marking their first game in over seven decades without an orange shell.
“I don’t like it. Get it out of here”
Shortly after orange had established itself as the Browns’ helmet color of choice at the beginning of the 50s, it appears that team chiefs did explore the possibility of adding a logo to the helmet. But the effort proved spectacularly abortive.
In 1953, according to Browns historian Barry Shuck, Cleveland head coach Paul Brown tasked equipment manager Leo Murphy with drawing the team’s “Brownie the Elf” mascot on to the helmet, just to see what it would look like.
“It took Murphy several days to stencil and paint the logo on the helmet,” Shuck writes in SB Nation. “He did not have time for this but worked on it tirelessly every spare minute he had.
“When finished, Murphy placed the Elf helmet on Coach Brown’s desk who took one quick look at it and said, 'I don’t like it. Get it out of here.' And that was that."
Did the Browns wear a “CB” helmet logo in the 60s?
Just over a decade after Murphy’s prototype shell-with-logo was chased out of Brown’s office, Cleveland played an exhibition game that spawned a years-long rumor.
Did the team wear a helmet with a “CB” logo on its side in the 1965 matchup with the Green Bay Packers?
They did no such thing, insists ClevelandScene editor-in-chief Vince Grzegorek. He sought to debunk the claim in a 2010 article, after dipping into the Browns’ archives to pore over photos from the game in question.
“Let me put it to rest right now,” Grzegorek wrote. “I can say without a doubt, 100 percent definitively, that the Browns never wore the logo during a preseason game.
“In photos from that exhibition game between the Browns and Packers in 1965, Cleveland’s helmets are resplendently plain. In fact, in no image from any exhibition game that year is there a ‘CB’ decal to be seen.”
The idea of a “CB” helmet logo does seem to have been floated by the franchise in the mid-1960s - it’s just it never made its way onto a game-worn shell.
Per Shuck, Browns owner Art Modell commissioned an artist to create the logo, for a helmet design that then appeared on team merchandise.
The shell was a feature of items such as “mini-helmet pencil sharpeners, posters, plaques, coasters, electric football sets, and a Browns youth football uniform ensemble complete with a ‘CB’ helmet.
“[But] at no time did the helmet actually find the field nor during practice.”
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