So weren’t you crazy about Super Bowl hero Cooper Kupp’s scruffy mountain man mustaches? Neither does his family, apparently.
“I don’t know what the deal is with the beard,” Craig Kupp, the father of the Los Angeles Rams wide receiver who was named the most valuable player in Super Bowl LVI last Sunday, told The Tacoma News Tribune in December. “I’m not a big fan.”
But it’s hard to argue with the results. The 28-year-old wide receiver, once an unannounced third-round pick out of Eastern Washington University known for his clean choirboy appearance, let his blonde chin pop over the course of last season, and in the Along the way, he emerged into an unstoppable NFL force. Not only did he dominate on the league’s biggest stage, but he also became the first player since 2005 to take home the so-called triple crown for receivers, leading the league in receptions, receiving yards and receiving touchdowns.
According to a recent Sports Illustrated article, he turned Grizzly Adams this year simply because he was on a roll, promising skeptical family members he’d shave as soon as he had a bad game.
The problem was that, as her grandmother Carla Kupp pointed out at the end of the season, “she hasn’t had one.”
Call it superstition. Call it coincidence. Call it a fashion statement to stand out as an alpha male among alpha males. But Mr. Kupp, 28, is not the first athlete to raise his public profile, and apparently he plays it, as he ditches the beard trimmers.
Think of it as the James Harden effect. Player X is good. Player X grows a crazy beard. Player X is suddenly cool. Strange, right?
At least in terms of image, that was the story with Harden, who grabbed nearly as many headlines as Kupp did last week after a successful trade to the Philadelphia 76ers from the Nets. Mr. Harden began his career in 2009 with a neatly trimmed beard that would barely qualify him for a barista job in Brooklyn and spent his early years as a sixth man, coming off the bench for the Oklahoma City Thunder behind his star teammates. Kevin Durant. and Russell Westbrook.
However, as Mr. Harden’s beard grew, so did his basketball superpowers (or vice versa), when he moved on to the Houston Rockets and became the cornerstone of the franchise. He won the league’s Most Valuable Player award in 2018 and, perhaps not coincidentally, became a GQ cover model with his trademark Santa Claus-scale beard, which established him as a personal brand triumph for fans wearing “Fear the Beard” t-shirts. .
A coincidence? Surely. It wasn’t Mr. Harden’s beard that was shooting 3s. Still, an impressive beard can serve a powerful semiotic function for a male athlete, or perhaps any man, vying for leadership status.
Some studies have shown that men with beards are perceived as having higher status than their clean-shaven counterparts, and also more aggressive, which is certainly not the worst connotation for a latter-day gladiator. A 2016 study from the University of Queensland in Australia collected data on more than 8,500 females and concluded that a full beard “indicates a male’s ability to compete for resources,” which is useful for finding a mate, but may not apply when resources are scarce. touchdowns
Do you doubt the magical properties of a sports beard? Just watch what happens when they disappear. Fans in barbecue country were stunned when Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, a seven-time Pro Bowl player, showed up at training camp last summer with a clean shave. (“Travis Kelce shaved off his beard and lost all the groove and soul from him,” Josh Sanchez, a sportswriter, wrote on Twitter.) In fact, Kelce’s season was a bit wobbly because of his high standards, inspiring headlines like “What’s up? with Travis Kelce?
Apparently, it’s best not to piss off the facial hair gods. Take Ryan Fitzpatrick, the well-traveled NFL quarterback, for example. The aura of him as the so-called gunslinger, a fearless bystander seemingly oblivious to risk, seems to grow with every inch of his prodigious mane over the years. Fitzpatrick himself has acknowledged that his monstrous beard is central to his image as the man behind the tooth-gnashing fourth-quarter heroics known as “Fitzmagic”.
An outlaw beard makes an even stronger statement in the relatively stylish sport of baseball, where the mega beard has taken on talismanic connotations for some players. Brian Wilson, the former relief pitcher for the San Francisco Giants, went from no Beach Boys kid to notorious late-inning killer after donning the intimidating look of Blackbeard en route to Series glory. World.
In 2016, ESPN followed former Chicago Cubs ace Jake Arrieta’s rise from clean-shaven college boy to Cy Young Award winner as a step-by-step look back at his growing facial hair. Justin Turner, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ third baseman, seemed to transform from Everyman to Superman once he adopted a bang of red mustaches that made him look like a berzerker emerging from a Viking ship.
Can beard magic work for entire teams? The 2013 Red Sox forged an identity and, ostensibly, a spirit of unity by adopting frontier hunter beards as “not just a fashion accessory,” as The New York Times reported at the time, but as “a way to build bonds.” stronger after death. the Red Sox’s problems last season,” when the team finished in last place in the American League East.
Hey, they won the World Series that year.
Source: www.nytimes.com