By ELIZABETH WELLINGTON, Staff Writer
We don't think college basketball players should be making layups in Speedos -- that would be gross! But fellas, your shorts. They’re huge! You might as well be wearing capris on the hardwood.
For a decade, the shorts worn by college players and their NBA counterparts have gotten progressively longer and baggier, bearing virtually no resemblance to the itty-bitty, tighty whities of yesteryear. That’s a long time for any style to stay alive, on or off the court.
While the hem lines on shorts have stayed below the
knee, ballplayers certainly haven’t been shy about changing with the winds of
fashion: Gold fronts have been slid
on and off teeth. Jheri curls have
given way to high-top fades and shaved heads; the Afro has made a comeback, and
cornrows are now the rage.
With all those fashion changes, why does almost every player insist on wearing shorts that could double as parachutes? It’s simple: Tiny is tacky, and at least in the NCAA rulebook, there’s nothing that says they can’t. “It’s got to be long,” North Carolina forward Jason Capel says. The senior wears a size 48 large on his lanky, 6-foot-8 frame; his shorts have always been loose-fitting. “I just get the longest they will let you wear.”
Shorts hovered above the mid-thigh through the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s. They were at their tightest in the 1970s, when male fashionistas routinely squeezed themselves into bell-bottoms off the court. In the 1980s, a young Michael Jordan started wearing his shorts a little baggier, but hem lines still weren’t anywhere near dragging on the floor.
Then came the hip-hop generation. Rap stars, emulating prisoners, wore pants so low they exposed boxers. There was so much extra room the crotches could be folded. Women, too, preferred the baggy look. The style crossed from the streets to the basketball court almost simultaneously.
During the 1991-92 season, five freshmen at the University of Michigan turned longer shorts into the unwritten uniform of college hoops and eventually the NBA. (They also popularized black socks, but that's another piece of fashion history.)
Brian Dutcher, then an assistant coach for the Fab Five team, had noticed before that season that players were pulling their shorts down to their hips; their jerseys wouldn't stay tucked in, and that bugged him. Dutcher, who had seen Arkansas’ players wearing longer shorts, decided to order a pair of shorts 2 to 4 inches longer. He wanted to see how they looked. “I showed them to Juwan [Howard], and he liked them, so we ordered all of the shorts longer,” says Dutcher, now an assistant at San Diego State under former Michigan head coach Steve Fisher. “The team was so good that they got all the exposure.”
Dugan Fife, who joined the team the following season, remembers putting on his first pair of extra-large shorts. “They were huge,” Fife says. “I had to get mine shortened. They were too long. They were down to mid-shin.”
That was the beginning. The next year, dozens of coaches from schools around the country started ordering the longer shorts. In 1994, North Carolina, which had defeated Michigan in the 1993 national championship game, ordered its first set of oversized shorts.
Apparel manufacturing companies like Nike, adidas and Champion began to custom-make shorts for players who wanted to wear them even longer than the current trend. Nowadays they routinely stop 1 or 2 inches below the knee.
“The shorts just got longer and longer,” says David Daly, director of Blue Heaven Basketball Museum in Chapel Hill, which displays uniforms from different eras. “The waist bands are so loose they hang on their butts,” he adds with a chuckle.
Today’s players have watched their role models soar in near-culottes most of their lives. Baggy pants are the only look they know. “I couldn't play in short shorts,” says Anthony Grundy, a 22-year-old guard for N.C. State’s Wolfpack who, at 6 feet 2 and 185 pounds, orders his tomato red bottoms a size XXL -- extra large times two. “If the shorts are too short, they’re uncomfortable.” Grundy says his long shorts don’t prevent him from dribbling the ball between his legs or executing any other basketball tricks.
UNC's Capel, who says he, too, is more comfortable in today’s shorts, cracks up when he thinks of the on-the-court look of Wilt Chamberlain, Larry Bird and Julius Irving. “It’s funny man. Just funny. I mean their spandex is longer than their shorts,” Capel says with a laugh. “It’s not supposed to be that way.”
But if college basketball follows the NBA’s lead, shorts may reach a limit. In November, nine NBA players, including Los Angeles Lakers stars Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant, were fined $5,000 each for ignoring a league rule that shorts can’t be worn lower than an inch above the knee. Rod Thorn, the NBA's vice president of operations, was quoted as saying that the style statement was getting out of control.
The NCAA doesn’t have any rule pertaining to the length of shorts. Jerseys are another story, says Ed Gilick, secretary and editor of the NCAA men’s basketball rules committee, because the numbers are on the jerseys and anything that could possibly obstruct the numbers is a definite fashion no-no. “Of course, the longer the shorts, the more they perspire,” Gilick says. “But that's not really our concern. If it got to the point where it affected the playing of the game, you could believe we would write some rules.”
© Copyright 2002, The News & Observer.