By Adam Juratovac
Adam Juratovac is Team On 3‘s team captain/network manager, charged with athlete recruitment. In addition, he is an attorney and the founder and editor of AthletesLTD, a platform featuring personal narratives written by athletes.
Complex recently published an article stating that the NBA will always be more stylish than the NFL. Complex is basing “fashion” on who fits in most at the Met Gala and New York Fashion Week, however that presumption is flawed (Hello, Dwyane Wade). “Fashion” should be defined as being dressed in a manner that is popular and forward thinking while still expressing one’s personality and it’s hard to think of athletes with bigger personalities than the ones that you’ll find in the NFL. Based on that assumption, here are 5 examples of NFL players who are decades ahead of NBA players in regards to fashion and style.
Case 1: Vince Wilfork
Vince is a 6’1’’, 325 lb. defensive mountain for the Houston Texans. He posted this picture of him wearing a white polo (it was before Labor Day), black golf shorts, and brown shoes. What are THOOOOOOOSEEEE!! BROWN SHOES! You’ve heard about the black belt and brown shoes dilemma but Vince’s style is so advanced he’s approached old-man status and is on team #Ionbecarin. How many basketball players would you see doing this? Exactly! AND he’s buying golf-balls from a garage sale.
NFL: 1 NBA: 0.
Case 2: Ricky Lumpkin
Ricky is a fashionable gentleman who wears sunglasses indoors and in the dark. Here, he is at an exclusive showing of Jurassic World. Ricky could assume that there would be a crowd there so he disguised himself with a hearty beard and some stylish shades. You can’t see where he’s looking, so you can’t see how far ahead he is in the fashion game. He wears his sunglasses at night…
NFL: 2 NBA: 0.
Case 3: Colin Kaepernick
If only we could be so lucky as to have a matching outfit with a @BeatsByDre item. It’s the combination of the backpack, headphones, hat, and leather that makes Colin the trendiest speaker look-a-like. They definitely coordinated this outfit the night before.
NFL: 3 NBA: 0.
Case 4: Brett Keisel
Then a little post #DickLeBeauMonth
ceremony workout with @Ike_SwagginU & @jharrison9292
#suited
#notbooted pic.twitter.com/qyh0IQwNJI
— Brett Keisel
(@bkeisel99) February 3,
Have you ever been so confident and stylish that you didn’t have to wear shoes and crossed your arms INSIDE of your shirt? Brett Keisel has. He has the beard of a Viking or Abraham Lincoln in his vampire slaying days. What’s more fashionable than a vampire killing 16th president? Nothing. The hand tucked in the shirt is a sign of power and as for the shoes, give it a few more years and he won’t need any because his beard will proceed him, and it’ll be laid out in front of him like at a red-carpet event. If that isn’t fashion, I don’t know what is.
NFL: 4 NBA: 0
Case 5: Tom Brady
Enough said.
By request of @caveboyjones…well yeah pic.twitter.com/awE0i19LbH
— Thunder Dan Weiner (@DanWeiner) August 12, 2015
NFL: 5 NBA: 0.
These NFL players are so far ahead of the fashion game, they’re even flying under the radars of the top fashion magazines (except Tom, he can’t escape the limelight.) But if you look closely at society, these athletes’ influence is readily apparent. These athletes have been influenced by culture, comfort and originality so much that they don’t need to listen to the “fashion world” or what GQ says because they’re creating the styles by themselves on the regular. Which one are YOU most likely to follow? Sweats and flip flops? Miraculous beards and barefeet? SUNGLASSES AT NIGHT AND INDOORS? You decide; they’ll continue breaking new ground waiting for you to catch up.
Note: We don’t have confirmation that Ricky was actually watching Jurassic World in 3-D. But we also don’t have confirmation that he wasn’t.
