[CTcard]

I have a friend who played football for Columbia (might have been NYU, I forget) in the no helmut days. 

Is he your younger friend??

Looking around a bit it seems helmets, if not helmuts, were at least almost universally worn in college football in the 1930s.
I found toss-off phrases such as "Helmets were not mandatory until the 30's", but it's hard to gauge the accuracy of these comments.
http://www.pasttimesports.biz/history.html
Wikipedia says 1939 in a manner that sounds authoritive, but I cannot check their reference right now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_...all_helmet

To push things, I'll do a rough estimate of your friend's age as 110 putting at 20 in 1924. Helmets were certainly around then but apparently significantly not-universal. 

Of course you may have been talking about the advent of plastic helmets, which seems to have been invented in 1940 and really come into use on the order of 1950. But that might let your friend only be in the 80s range, and where's the fun in that?

[CTcard]

I have a friend who played football for Columbia (might have been NYU, I forget) in the no helmut days. 

Is he your younger friend??

Looking around a bit it seems helmets, if not helmuts, were at least almost universally worn in college football in the 1930s.
I found toss-off phrases such as "Helmets were not mandatory until the 30's", but it's hard to gauge the accuracy of these comments.
http://www.pasttimesports.biz/history.html
Wikipedia says 1939 in a manner that sounds authoritive, but I cannot check their reference right now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_...all_helmet

To push things, I'll do a rough estimate of your friend's age as 110 putting at 20 in 1924. Helmets were certainly around then but apparently significantly not-universal. 

Of course you may have been talking about the advent of plastic helmets, which seems to have been invented in 1940 and really come into use on the order of 1950. But that might let your friend only be in the 80s range, and where's the fun in that?