It isn't easy being a gridiron devotee these days. Teams seems to have a quota of at least one player who has committed an unconscionable crime. The NFL continues to pretend that the brain damage suffered by players comes from some other source than their main job responsibility being beaten over the head thousands of times over just a few years. Owners lord over their cities, demanding stadium renovation patronage from taxpayers, lest they pull an Art Modell and flee to greener pastures. Safe to say, loving the game is kinda tough right now.
Sorry, NFL loyalists, but today we're going to kick you while you're already down.
NFL fans are far and away the worst dressed in all of professional sports. Yes, the NASCAR fan's mullet deserves ridicule. Sure, baseball fans all dress like a 48 year-old dad with middle management insurance jobs, but football fans have earned the worst dressed throne after decades demonstrating breadth and depth of terrible wardrobe choices. What makes the collective fashion sense of NFL fans so terrible? Let's break it down.
Problem #1: The Jersey
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One of America's most stereotypically masculine pursuits is observed while wearing one of the most emasculating outfits. The average male NFL fan wears a jersey that is seven sizes too big. These jerseys billow over even the most well-maintained beer belly. A night gown-sized shirt with another man's name on the back feels more appropriate for a lady's morning after wear than for a day of boozing and screaming until you pass out.
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That isn't to say that an emasculating outfit can't be fashionable. Emasculation has long been an important part of men's fashion, both yesterday and today.
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The problem is that the football jersey makes you look like a child, but not in a slick Thom Browne, boarding school type of way. When you wear a football jersey, you look like the kind of dense kid who has not yet learned how to pick out clothes that fit. Your twig-like arms flail, attempting to escape from the folds of your mesh jersey, as your root on your team and reach for another mozzarella stick.
And if the complete emasculation hasn't already completed the task, when you put on a football jersey, you are telling members of the opposite sex, "Please don't view me as an object of desire today. I am going to spend the day screaming like a sullen child as I slather myself in bar-b-que sauce, nacho cheese, and ranch dressing. Even the slightest hint of female attention would do nothing but get in the way of my drunken revelry."
Problem #2: The Accessories
A good accessory modestly complements the greater ensemble, adding a charming touch to a nearly complete outfit. A pocket square, an understated wrist watch, or a scarf that neither a) appropriates another culture or b) looks like it was knitted by your grandmother are all accessories that can bring an outfit together if deployed well.
Your average football accessory tends to dominate an ensemble, as evidenced here by the traditional head wear of...
Packers fans:
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Vikings fans:
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and Jets fans:
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The items that football fans carry in their hands don't help their look much either. The most common handheld accessory for the football fan is an offensive sign scrawled out in shitty handwriting:
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If a fan manages to not offend others and humiliate his family with his (or her, all genders can be bigoted morons in 2014, y'all!) homemade signage, there still plenty of other accessories that can help him look worse.
Other unfortunately common fan accessories include...
Items made of foam:
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Jewelry:
And delusions of having an impact on the outcome of the game:
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You're about as likely to see a tasteful accessory when you look out into the stands as you are hearing a civilized and patient discourse on player behavior off the field.
Problem #3: Face Paint
From time to time, face paint shows up in other sports, but no one likes to plaster their face in colored make-up in support of their favorite group of muscled millionaires like a football fan. The idea is that face paint should function as a kind of war paint. In reality, the fans who get all dolled up for their team end up looking less like fearsome warriors and more like extras from a community theater production of The Mikado.
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Problem #4: Backwards Hats
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Other sports fans left backwards hats behind in the mid-'90s where they belong. Basketball fans have moved on to the more stylish forward-facing flat brim long ago. Baseball fans continue to wear those faded, folded brim hats meant to remind them of when they first played catch with their old man in the backyard. Football bros continue to wear their hats backwards, as though to signal that they are totally ready to toss the pigskin around with the back-up QB if he should need a warm-up buddy and third stringer Matt Leinert is too busy texting his college fuck buddies to see if any of them are in town.
The even less fashionable subcategory of the backwards hat is the the backwards hat with sunglasses on top, as modeled here by a sullen Colts fan. Judging by the fan's demeanor, this picture looks to be from the post-Manning-pre-Luck era. Oops, no, he's wearing a Luck jersey. Maybe he just realized how stupid he looks.
Problem #5: Chronic Shirtlessness
Football fandom is all about worthless measurements of what it means to be a "real fan." This manifests itself in many ways, all of them uniquely and extremely annoying.
If you have any friends who are Redskins or Browns fans, you've suffered through their explanations of how difficult it is for them to eat wings and nachos on their couch while they watch their team lose. They believe this gives them some sort of nobility, like a soldier who knows he's fighting for a lost cause.
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Another common mark of "true fandom" is telling stories about players from before said fan was born. As a Steelers fan, I've seen about a thousand variations on the following scene:
Female enters sports bar wearing Steelers jersey. Male Steelers fan (drunk, wearing a Roethlisberger jersey, has really shitty facial hair) approaches.
Male: Nice jersey. I bet you can't name four players from the Steel Curtain.
Female: I'm just trying to watch the game.
Male: Mean Joe Greene is the greatest Steeler there ever was if you ask me.
Female Steelers fan moves to the other side of the bar, where she will be similarly harassed by some other jagoff.
Substitute in the names of players from your team's glory days, and I'm sure you've heard a bar conversation or four hundred just like this.
And perhaps the the most ridiculous way that men prove their devotion to these insanely profitable businesses is by insisting on remaining shirtless no matter how cold it is at the game.
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Hey, you never made varsity when you played special teams back in high school, but by God you're going to do your part by earning yourself a pair of frostbitten nipples in the name of team spirit.
Problem #6: Tattoos
Tattoos are by their very nature regrettable. It seems almost unfair to count them as part of one's fashion. Even the most stylish among us might be hiding a barbed wire bicep piece or a dolphin and hibiscus tramp stamp from less enlightened days beneath our couture. However, so many NFL fan tattoos are so offensively terrible that they need to be part of this discussion.
WARNING: It's easy to get lost in the Google rabbit hole of terrible NFL tattoos. About an hour of work on this piece was lost scrolling through unspeakable body art horrors. Here are a few sample pieces for those who have schedules that can't accommodate hour-long Google breaks.
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There is plenty to argue about in the NFL this year. Does the NFL have a problem with how the league views and treats women? (Yes.) Should the Washington football team change its name? (Yes.) Is the league suppressing concussion information in favor of short term profits? (Also yes.)
Okay, maybe there isn't actually that much to argue about. Let's add to the list one other thing that is objectively true, but idiots still will want to argue about in the comments section: NFL fans are the worst dressed sports fans—and among the worst dressed human beings—on planet Earth.
Brenden Gallagher is a Steelers fan prepared to handle the misguided anger of armchair quarterbacks @muddycreekU.
