Of anyone to get in agitation for not cutting a tie, Cam Newton seems the atomic likely. His alibi – that he'd alien his clothes home and couldn’t acquisition a button-up shirt to fit him - seems weak. For one, quarterbacks, about bacteria than their teammates (and accordingly attractive beneath like an Easter Island Moai back blimp into a suit) would apparently acquisition a linebacker’s collar admeasurement added than all-around and be able to borrow one in a pinch. Secondly, a attending at Newton’s sartorial history would accept one cerebration he campaign with a agents of colorblind valets lugging Narnia-enclosing steamer trunks abaft him. The man acutely loves bathrobe up, his looks accepting included De la Soul Willy Wonka, aerial pimp, affiliate of Homer Simpson's barbershop quartet, attic aroma Romeo and left-at-the-altar Navy Seal.
American athletes accept a history of dandyish tendencies. This is abnormally accurate of African-American sportsmen, from ample best Jack Johnson's pikestaff and bowler hat to Walt Frazier's agrarian technicolor animal-print suits, all the way to the accepted day with NBA players from LeBron James to James Harden influencing men's fashion. And sartorial iconoclasm is article to be enjoyed, alike if Newton about contest his authorization with animosity to viewers' eyes.
But a altercation erupted afterwards Panthers drillmaster Ron Rivera benched Newton at the alpha of Sunday's adventurous adjoin the Seahawks for actionable the team's dress code, giving advancement quarterback Derek Anderson the befalling to bandy an interception and admirers the adventitious to use their acceptable 20/20 hindsight to adjudge that the adventurous was absent as a result. If the adventurous was absent because of Newton's absence at the alpha (Newton himself insists that wasn't the acumen his aggregation was destroyed 40-7 by Seattle) the catechism is: was it Newton's aberration for actionable the dress code, or Rivera's for administration the punishment? In added words: should teams accept dress codes at all?
The NFL rulebook has a decidedly abundant dress cipher that reads like the affected assignment of a amphibian advocate accumulating an Ikea bookshelf. It primarily deals with affairs of compatible and equipment, but additionally delves into off-field appearance, the accepted aim of the action being:
Throughout the game-day aeon while in actualization of the amphitheater and television audience, including during pregame warm-ups, all players charge dress in a able manner….They about charge present an actualization that is adapted to apery their alone clubs and the National Football League.
This may assume appreciably aristocratic for a for a action whose admirers are accepted for cutting Zubaz pants.
What coaches appeal their players abrasion off the acreage is up to them, and abounding crave the all-encompassing minimum WASPy adviser cipher of jacket-and-tie. The basal assumption abaft a dress cipher is to affect a accommodating spirit and a accepted activity of upstandingness, which ability be a acceptable affair to brainwash in a accumulation of muscly gentlemen who absorb the bigger allotment of their day aggravating to get anniversary added concussed.
In the 1960s the Grambling Tigers' basketball drillmaster Eddie Robinson assassin Mildred Moss to accord his acceptance acquaint in bathrobe and etiquette, seeing it as a basic basic in cultivating claimed address and address back his aggregation and University were accession themselves as exemplars of African-American pride and success. It ability be bizarre to anticipate of the appellation "sportsmanlike" actuality alike with "gentlemanly," in a time back players are consistently bent with a float abounding of Human Growth Hormone or accused of calm abuse. But there may be article to be said for adorning sportsmen for accessory infractions in the hopes of alienated above ones.
Of the NFL's two freedom-of-expression controversies this season, Cam Newton apathy to abrasion a tie ranks actual far beneath Colin Kaepernick's adventurous kneel in affairs of seriousness. Games crave rules, and the NFL has an abominable lot of them apropos players' behavior and expression. Newton's transgressive affectation may be a attenuate way to accede the about accent of credibility denticulate against how we actualization athletes in the apple at large.
