The 10 Best Dressed Athletes of the '90s

The '90s were a great time in sports. It was the decade when athletes first began to be treated as celebrities, their paychecks soared astronomically, and their personalities were just as enormous as their freakish 'roided out bodies. Style may have been secondary to the heroic feats these guys committed every gameday, but we can now look back with nostalgia at the sartorial choices our sports idols made in a decade that was generally defined by prosperity, panache, and flagrancy.

The athletes of the '90s weren't being invited to New York Fashion Week and didn't "intern" at Vogue, but they were definitely setting trends and rocking the illest gear back in the day. Some of these dudes would be a far cry from any "best dressed" list in their current get-ups, but we tracked down and ranked the glory days of these stylish dudes. Click through and check out The 10 Best Dressed Athletes of the '90s.

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Even though his style and his skills have deteriorated with age, Derek Jeter was quite crispy in the '90s as a young superstar who brought glory to New York. Off the field, he perfected the t-shirt under the blazer look, a trend that began in the '80s but lasted well into the next decade. His boxy blazers were the fit du jour, and the toned down dressiness that he perfected certainly helped him reach every base a few hundred times.

Take a look at a line-up of Hollywood's finest women from the '90s and chances are Jeter knows all of them in the Biblical sense. Though being a millionaire athlete in NYC certainly helped, it's doubtful that the country's fashionistas would've hooked up with Jeter if his style wasn't on the same level as theirs. What young actress/model/singer wants to share the spotlight with a slob?

Larry Johnson wins the prize for best dressed draft day portrait. Along with a trippy paisley print tucked into white trousers and some crisp kicks, LJ is also sporting the gold front tooth that became his signature accessory on and off the court. These days, NBA players accessorize with tights, pads, and sleeves. Twenty years ago LJ was leading the Hornets with gold all in his grill. Take one guess which era we prefer.

But his most infamous sartorial choice is the the outfit he sported as his alter ego Grandmama in a Converse campaign and on Family Matters. Goddamn do we miss the '90s. Do you think Lebron or any other current professional NBA player would have the cajones to cross-dress for a national advertising campaign in a floral number with pearls and a gold capped tooth and subsequently dunk on suckas?

Shaquille O'Neal was a bit of a cultural obsession of ours in the '90s, and for good reason. The massive Orlando Magic center was charismatic, hilarious, and, contrary to what the laws of physics dictated, somehow dressed well. Shaq very quickly became a veritable superstar who partied with A-list celebs and became nation's favorite gentle giant who could rock dope threads.

When he was wearing suits, Shaq seems to have preferred peak lapels, and was even dressed on the same level as Cindy Crawford with a rust colored double breasted blazer at the 1993 VMAs. But when the big man was lounging around at LSU or recording Shaq Fu: Da Return, he was more inclined to rock comfy athletic gear, including pieces from his clothing line TWIsM. It's hard for large dudes to usually look this good without looking like ill-dressed giants, but Shaq managed to pull it off, unlike his rapping career.

Lawrence Taylor partied like a rockstar and dressed the part. Widely hailed as the greatest defensive player of all time, LT led a reckless and wild lifestyle that he claims produced his effective style of play on the field. LT ushered in the decade with the flashiness of his way of life reflected in his clothing, and never looked back.

During the '90s, when he wasn't holed up in coke dens or sending prostitutes to opponents' hotel rooms the night before games, LT was partying hard in OG cokeboy clothing and his signature gold earring. Whether he was in a crispy outfit or in uniform, if you saw LT heading your way, you knew that you were gonna be in pain the next morning.

Michael Irvin, one of the greatest wide receivers of all time, made headlines when he decided to show up to court in a full-length fur coat. In summer. In Texas. Back then, he was known for his loud suits from European fashion houses and his chunky jewelry. A profile of him in a 1996 Sports Illustrated article began by describing what Irvin was wearing: "an electric-purple, a diamond Superman necklace, and gold-plated sunglasses." Pretty par for the course for Irvin, and that's why athletes emulated his expensive tastes. As usual, the superstar receiver was unapologetic for his flamboyant fashion, saying "'I dress like I dress.'" These days you can catch Michael still trying to capture some of that old magic while analyzing football every Sunday, and it just ain't working.

So it's no secret that Michael Jordan isn't a style icon in 2012, but when His Airness was first bringing home championships to Chicago in the '90s his style was on par with his court skills. How can you contest the man who brought us the now ubiquitous Air Jordan brand? And it turns out that MJ could've been even steezier than what the evidence shows. In the first photo from a 1991 SNL hosting gig, Jordan is wearing a piece from a diffusion brand that never came to be called Jordan Beyond. Intended to be less sporty and more fashion-forward than Air Jordan, it sadly never saw the light of day.

Who knows if having his hand in this pot would've steered him clear of the outfits we see him rocking in 2012, but MJ could seemingly do no wrong back in the '90s. We're not sure what happened to MJ to put him on the current style path he's on, but seeing him in these pics brings us back to his glory days.

Andre Agassi is said to have single-handedly revived tennis's popularity in the '90s. If you saw this wild-haired neon-wearing meth-smoking crazy person playing tennis on your TV, would you switch the channel? Playing a sport with no team uniform, Agassi was hands-down the first player to bring this extreme of a personal style sense with him onto the court. From the neon to the acid wash to the sick shoes, Agassi was constantly battling to be the top dog of the sport, but he bodied the competition when it came to on-court and off-court style in tennis.

Agassi was so into his personal steez that from 1988-1990 he abstained from playing in Wimbledon because its traditional dress code called for a predominantly white outfit. He also once wore a wig instead of baring his balding dome to the world in his first Grand Slam finals appearance in 1990. Agassi claimed that he was so distracted by the wig potentially falling off that it lost him the match. A combined four champsionships sacrificed for the sake of image? Now that is commitment to the style game.

Is '90s era Deion Sanders the style icon of Trinidad James? Neon Deion absolutely shut down wide receivers and put together a decent baseball career with a style of play that has yet to be topped in terms of flash. Draped in clothing and jewelry that was as gloriously brash and as loud as his charismatic personality (both on the field and off), Deion created the shut-down corner position and made sure he was well compensated for it.

And when you're simply known as Prime Time, of course your off the field alter ego is going to dress the part. Prime Time's personal wardrobe was composed of clothes that matched the personality in terms of flamboyance and flash. The Prime Time era is one we will not easily forget, and we should all agree to remember Deion's style as it was in this decade, instead of what he tries to pull off now.