Let’s talk about polos.
If you spend any amount of time around a football program – literally take your pick – you’re going to see an astronomical amount of team apparel. Seriously, think about the last time you saw your favorite college football coach take the podium wearing anything other than something with a logo on it. Watch videos from practice – logos. See view of the sideline during the game – logos. Recruiting trips – logos.
And of course this makes sense, you probably would be a bit confused to see James Franklin walking the practice fields in an AC/DC shirt. Not to mention if some portion of my contract was coming from Nike I would also wearing Nike apparel at all times.
But as is well documented, coaches don’t stay put. Assistant coaches in particular are always on the move from job to job, bouncing around the country as they work their way up the coaching ladder.
This brings up a very important question: what happens to all that team apparel when a coach leaves one school and goes to another? What happens to all those polos?
“I’ve heard some guys have yard sales and such,” new Penn State offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich said before practice on Saturday. Yurcich has made stops at Ohio State and Texas in the past two years. “Hopefully they’re donating money back to their charity. I don’t know what happens to [mine] be honest with you. I don’t have the slightest idea. My wife will deal with it somehow and it goes away and just leave it behind. It’s all blue in my closet. I got a couple things from Shippensburg; I got a couple of tees and some sweatpants.”
Whether or not to keep the shirts is a matter of some debate among Penn State coaches. Almost all of them have given some of them away to friends or family. After all a guy can only own so many shirts.
Or you could be like special teams coordinator Joe Lorig who moves on the moment the next job comes up.
“I only have coaching clothes and fishing clothes,” Lorig said. “That’s pretty common. When I got fired at Idaho State in 2008, I literally didn’t have any clothes. I think my wife had to take me to the store to buy sweatpants and stuff because I’d been there 10 years. That was all my gear.
“Some coaches aren’t like that. There are a lot of coaches they’ll wear stuff from other places. Once I don’t work there anymore, I give it all away.”
If you’re wondering about being color coordinated on a day like Penn State’s media day, when every coach happened to be wearing the exact same thing – it wasn’t a mistake. According to Lorig the khaki, black shoes and polo outfit was waiting for them in the locker room. Another addition to a growing shoe closet.
“I own zero pairs of khakis,” Lorig said. “These are school ones they just gave me today. Other than that: zero. I wear the same pair of shoes every day. They’re all brand new. I probably have 50 pairs of shoes, but they [players] tease me because I literally wear the same pair every day.”
Not every coach is quite as regimented as Lorig. Across the ball receivers coach Taylor Stubblefield does keep a few items for former schools but he also makes sure to keep his own style in mind when he’s out on the town.
“I try to keep my swag and my drip all that kind of stuff,” Stubblefield said. “I try to keep up with it so that you don’t see me just team issued gear all the time.”
There is an element of privacy that comes with wearing your own clothes too. Penn State assistant coaches are recognized on occasion, but you would have to be a pretty dedicated fan to recognize running backs coach Ja’Juan Seider out in the world. If he’s wearing a Penn State polo, you might guess he’s a coach — or maybe a Penn State dad living his best life — but in normal clothes Seider can gain a little extra privacy out in public.
“You don’t always want to be in the spotlight, especially when you’re in town,” Seider said of wearing his own clothes. “Everybody knows who you are and you want to get away. Maybe you want to have an adult beverage; you don’t want everybody judging or taking pictures because you know we live in a world where cameras rule the world. And I know it comes with it but you know it’s still that fine line. We don’t get gear free like like we used to so a lot of people hold on to what they had when they purchased.”
You get taxed on team gear?
“Oh yeah man, they get you on everything,” Seider says with a laugh.
But back to all those old shirts.
“Usually you’ve got a lot of friends at that place,” Seider added. “For me, I went to West Virginia, so a lot of teammates like the gear, but I keep a couple things. You want to remember where your stops have been. Even at Florida A&M, guys I played with there. I just give it away. I will donate a lot of stuff sometimes to people who are less fortunate than us, you know anytime we can give back and help somebody with stuff we’re not using.”
As for longtime defensive coordinator Brent Pry, he plans on giving his stuff away one day if his time at Penn State comes to an end. In the meanwhile, if he’s out in public he’s doing his best to let some personality shine through.
“Honestly, when I’m not coming to work I try to wear my own stuff. I’ve got my own style. I’m a music guy so I’ve got a ton of Allman Brothers, Tedeschi-Trucks T-shirts, stuff like that I was looking for,” Pry said. “My wife likes to try and dress me up a little bit but that’s not gonna include a Penn State golf shirt.”
So ends an important piece of investigative journalism.
