I haven’t written about the NCAA men’s basketball tournament since it began in part because my bracket did as well as you’d expect given the few minutes I spent on it.
I managed to pick none of the Final Four teams. I had three Elite Eight teams, but I picked the wrong Duke–Louisville winner, and I missed Gonzaga’s and Miami’s missing the regional-final weekend.
I’m not sure what prompted Grantland’s Wesley Morris to write this analysis of basketball coaches’ appearance, but he did:
For an event that’s nicknamed the Big Dance, has a round called the Sweet 16, and is annually desperate for a Cinderella story, the NCAA basketball tournament should involve more coaches who look ready to go to a ball. It’s true that we ought to be thankful for the little things: no shiny fabrics, no pocket squares, nothing too outfit-y. But little things are all these guys seem to give. …
No one wants to see versions of Bruce Pearl, the former Tennessee coach — not on 64 teams, anyway — just a couple of men willing to go all out, as Pearl once did, maybe in sherbet-orange suspenders and blazers and ties. You don’t want someone to put your eyes in a state of sugar shock. You want someone like Bob Knight to appall you with his certifiable slovenliness or John Thompson to soothe you with perfectly tailored, avuncular classiness (his son is coaching Georgetown now, and it’s always too much suit).
Instead, we get someone like Michigan State’s Tom Izzo, who claps and wails and sweats on the sideline like Jimmy Swaggart. He does so in gray and brown businesswear and patterned ties. There’s nothing wrong with it — he seems, finally, to have found a flattering hair color. But you wish he’d find clothes to complement his coachly theatrics. Or we get men like Temple’s Fran Dunphy, who always looks to be in need of a pack of Rolaids. His hair does, too. Two years ago, he famously shaved off his mustache and appeared the way a lot of men who shaved their mustaches do: like a skinned animal. He hasn’t looked back since.
Rick Pitino would appear to be a proper answer to the question of what to do. He’s 60 now, but his hair still has the shape and volume of one of Frankie Valli’s Four Seasons. If you believe in that hair, it’s only because he does. Watching the tournament from home, you realize, year after year, that almost no one else has his kind of certainty and confidence or star power. During Louisville games, the broadcasters like to cut to him because he looks important. Pitino knows he’s Rick Pitino, and that knowledge gives him the confidence to storm the sidelines in ivory and in lemony yellow. …
My guess is that some coaches look at Pitino and think, All that flash, all those colors? They’re too much, they’re too mobby. These guys are more at home in the warm-up jackets and sweats they wear to press conferences than the suits they wear to games. They might say, “What Pitino’s doing is great for him, but I’m not the point, basketball is.” That’s how you wind up with the literalism of Marquette’s Buzz Williams, whose hair is as long as most Ramones songs.
Shaved heads and baldness so predominate that you sense that the men with hair have it defensively. Tom Crean of Indiana is an if-you-got-it-flaunt-it coach. There’s something moneyed about him. He looks comfortable in his suits, even the ones that don’t fit. But that hair of his — usually a matte chestnut, frequently parted up the middle — can only be described as boastful. It’s long for the sake of being long. It’s long in a way that’s not entirely embarrassing on a man in his latish 40s who’s not also playing bass in a Dire Straits cover band. But it’s also long in a way that’s worn not for style but for men like Buzz Williams. It’s saying, “Doesn’t all this hair look good on me?” It’s singing, “Nyah, nyah, nyah-nyah nyah.” …
Setting aside his legend at Duke, Mike Krzyzewski still has the hair of certain Legos. Neither the length nor the color appears to have changed in decades, which gives him a kind of dolorous boyishness. It’s the most important hair in professional sports, for what it says both about the primacy of youth and the obsessive maintenance of its patina. He could change it no more than Anna Wintour could open up her curtaining bob. … Coach K would be tinkering with the myth of an institution and its notorious sense of majestic immortality.
At this point some visuals are required, in order of mention in what you’ve read, for a few of the more remarkable examples:
There used to be more variety in basketball coach style. Tom Izzo’s predecessor at Michigan State was Jud Heathcote, who made a point of wearing something green for each Spartan game:
Former Iowa coach George Raveling wore a sweatsuit for a while. The Internet has failed to provide a photo of that look.
Former ABA, NBA and college coach Larry Brown had an interesting, shall we say, look in his ABA days, though he wasn’t alone:
The only way in which Wisconsin basketball coaches have been style leaders is in wearing red, most recently Dick Bennett …
… and Bo Ryan:
Both were predated by, probably among others, hockey coach Bob Johnson:
(Note the red banner on the wall. The, uh, head Leckrone Legionnaire has worn a red blazer and white turtleneck for decades.)
It’s unclear to me why anyone looks to coaches for a certain style. Coaches are usually physical education graduates. Name the last well-dressed phy ed graduate you’ve seen. That’s like asking a journalist for style tips.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 