An American Lion

Larry Brown / Jack Ramsey / Lanny Wilkens

Do you think these men should be ashamed of how they look?

No.

Neither do I. It’s tempting to think that we can go back and look at the 1970s and laugh at how people looked. I don’t see it. I lived through those years. Those were the years when I was in my twenties and thirties. I had a lot of money. I fought in the Octagon. I wore a lot of nylon because I needed zippered pockets when I traveled to fights and tournaments. I wore business clothes otherwise—my usual tan pant and blue shirt with boat shoes.

The 1970s were a time of action, and doing things, and forgetting about angst and society’s problems and all that. It was a great time to be alive, even though America was sort of on a downward cycle. It was a great time to be interested in sports and making money and being out and about.

Look at this picture of Basketball coach Larry Brown. He’s slim, he’s wearing coveralls, and he looks fabulous.

Larry Brown, 1975

Sports Illustrated would have us think that this is something to be embarrassed about. It is not.

Plaids and casual wear were quite fashionable, especially, and because of, golfing in this country. People think golf began with the Tiger era. No, not at all. Golf really began to take off in the 1970s when tournaments were broadcast live on weekend television. There were golf sections of newspapers, golf writers, and golf groupies. There were entire department stores—well, not really—there were entire sections of department stores where you could buy golf clothing. Now it’s all pants that hang down and show the crack of your ass and relaxed fit.

Relaxed fit!

That’s what you didn’t see in the 1970s. There was no such thing as “relaxed fit.” Relaxed fit meant that you were a longshoreman trying to work in dungarees in the middle of the summer and you needed a big shirt so that you could throw bags of rice onto pallets. Relaxed fit meant you wore work pants without a belt so that your butt crack showed.

Your clothes fit you back then. You kept yourself slim, you kept yourself from getting fat, and you worked like a madman in order to do it. If I felt fat, I’d go for a run. I’d run for three or four hours and then not eat or drink anything for two or three days. Often, I’d pass out. But I stayed slim.

Nowadays, any fatass with a credit card account at TJ Maxx can go out and get himself twenty pairs of relaxed fit pants and walk around with a flat ass that the ladies don’t want to look at. Ever since they started making Dockers with an elastic waistband, it’s been a desert in modern American men’s fashion. It’s been a barren, poorly-dressed wasteland of pleats populated by frumpy, widebody slapfaces, parading around down at Starbucks, one whiskey bottle away from confusion and vagrancy.

It’s true—I had a husky boy phase, but I outgrew it. I played football and lost twenty pounds in two weeks. I toughened up. I cowboy’ed up. I got angry. I stared at myself in the mirror with nothing but disgust on my face and I clenched my fists and made myself slim enough to wear jumpsuits and mesh T-shirts. I was always frisky, and with that added energy, and some pills, I was fine. Nervous and jumpy sometimes, but I always worked with our family doctor to get the amphetamines to work with me, not against me.

Men could wear whatever they wanted to wear, so they went with tight pants, plaids, open collars, nylon and polyester. It was what we did. We wore whatever they were selling in the stores, you see. There wasn’t a Gap (right? Gap came about because kids needed part-time work in malls, correct?). There was Montgomery Wards. You went there, bought seven or eight shirts, some suit coats that fit, pants that didn’t split when you bent over, three belts, a few pairs of shoes, some socks, and I always went commando. I learned to go commando because they don’t sell underwear in India for husky boys—it’s true.

I preferred khaki slacks and a blue dress shirt. I dressed it up with a plaid blazer, often a blue and red one, in black, if available. I only wore socks when Father was around; otherwise, I had on my boat shoes and went barefoot in them.

Turtlenecks were a necessity in cold regions. Look at these photos:

Bob Slick

Looks pretty radical, doesn’t he? Except that that was in style, you see:

Kevin Loughery

Turtleneck, suit coat, slacks. Mix in plaids or Earth tones. I miss textures and patterns in clothing. I’m tired of seeing everyone wearing the same thing. I’m tired of seeing people stagger around in long shorts, T-shirt, and flip-flops. Criticize the 1970s all you want, but, in thirty years, anyone caught wearing a wife-beater T-shirt, NBA style playground shorts, and cheap footwear is going to look far worse than Larry Brown does.

Go back and look at all of these coaches. Their clothing says professionalism and attention to detail. It says comfort AND it says utility. It reflects the time in which they lived. It makes for excellent womanizing, by the way. Go ahead. Try and womanize in your NBA shorts. Then, put on a skin-tight pair of denim coveralls and go roller blading. Make sure they can see your bulge when you flex your arms and dance. The ladies will stand in their own puddles, waiting to find out where they can take you and give you a tag-teamed tongue bath. I’m sorry—I went there. Yeah, it was about sex. We had sex. We had it whenever and wherever we could. We were bored. There was no Internet to speak of. There was nothing on TV.

That’s not a bad way to walk around. That’s well-dressed, in my book.

Everyone looks ridiculous thirty years later. That’s a given.