Sports, people, is the biggest fashion show on the planet. You can have your Park Avenue Dolce-whatever runway shows or Laguna Beach "over privileged mesh hat wearing skater/surfer getups" any day, but I think the playing fields and courts are the best runways around.
While my love of all things uniform-related may have piqued my interest in athletics at an early age, it didn't become clear to me until junior year in high school. This was when I was sitting at my football locker, dutifully putting on my shoulder pads and accompanying jersey (what I thought to be uniform enough) when I looked at a senior running back getting dressed in front of me. He would not limit himself to the conformity of team issued helmets, shoulder pads, jerseys, pants, etc. He was doing everything in his power to make sure that, whether he rushed for 120 yards or 1.2 yards, he would look good doing it.
"Pat," I asked, for that was his name, "why all the getup?"
He continued to wrap tape around fingers I had never seen get badly hurt. He continued the tape-fest on his facemask. I had the same facemask, the Emmitt Smith model with the added bars near the middle so idle hands can't get inside. But I had never sprained my facemask, or pulled it, to the point that it needed to be taped up. And he wasn't even using pre-wrap ... the nerve.
Pat had also slid on some black wrist bands, but slid them to a point just south of his elbows. Michael Jordan should get royalties every time this is done. As he rubbed eye black underneath each of his seers, he bluntly told me the reasoning behind this as he kept his eyes on the mirror.
"Timmy," he muttered but with senior authority, "it's a fashion show out there."
Such poetry. That's it. I thought of all the times I had looked across the field or ice or whatever and, just upon seeing a uniform or a style, I thought, "These guys really have their sh*#t together."
Of course, the opposite was true when I played my first freshman football game in high school. We were the scariest looking bunch you had ever seen. Gold helmets, but more importantly under those gold helmets were the faces of madmen. Skeletons painted on our hairless mugs, complete with black holes for eyes that would have made the devil himself shutter. Think "Dead Presidents" robbery crew meets Lattimer in "The Program". We were ready, and we had full Halloween faces to prove it. You want to know just how ready we were? 26-0 at halftime. The other guys. I guess in putting on the face paint I hadn't taken into account that I was 5'1", 110 pounds. I was a football model alright, but I shared a real model's size a little too much.
Our coach lit into us, but not for our play as much as the way we looked while playing the way we did. This was the same man who used to threaten tying one string from the facemask to the genitalia of our six-foot fullback to make him run lower (you can figure that one out). He obviously had some spunk in him.
So was it coincidence that Baltimore laid a licking on the Browns the night the Ravens donned their new all black getup (complete with no pads in the pants to make them look like women getting on a treadmill in their spandex)? All style, all the time. How do you think the Steelers field competitive teams, era after era? A consistent uniform trance is placed on their opponents is my best guess.
How about the Bengals on Sunday, coming to their own field looking like a cross between a construction site and the Nickelodeon logo? They looked truly destined for the fate that befell my freshman football team when we lost 33-6 (we managed to scratch out six points in the second half that day vs. the bearded men from Peabody High, after we had washed our faces until the stigma of the first half had gone away). But somehow the Bengals caught the Cowboys off guard, to the tune of a 26-3 beating. I think Dallas hadn't planned to be playing against a gang of candy corn.
Speaking of Dallas, though, where is the Steelers-Raiders-Colts mystique in their timeless uniforms? Alas, apparently the players under the helmets and pads had to come to play. The garments just can't do the trick on their own. Just ask Notre Dame. Or the Yankees for that matter, about whom Christopher Walken's character Frank Abignale in "Catch Me If You Can" uttered this (once true) beauty.
"You know why the Yankees always win? 'Cause the other teams can't stop staring at those damn pinstripes."
It's a fashion show. Results may vary.
