Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Mug Shots of the NWC

I feel a little robbed by Adam Johnson of D3football.com who wrote about the porn ‘staches the seniors at PLU busted out for their profile pictures this season. He’s stealing a little bit of my thunder because a few weeks ago I thought of running this post about the various mug shot pictures in the NWC this year. DAMN YOU ADAM JOHNSON!

Anyways, the football mug shot is a phenomenon that goes back to the beginning of the games. There are so many different variations of how players present themselves in the mug shot. Honestly, most are pretty comical. Most players probably don’t even think their mug shot until they sit down in front of the camera. Then they immortalized their image as a player for the rest of their days in some ridiculous manner.

I was always the 'clean cut and smile guy” for my mugs. I smile because I was playing college football and enjoyed every minute of playing, so why not smile? I’m not a mean guy so why try to put on a front and look tough? A mug shot never won a game so I didn’t see why I needed to looked pissed.

So let’s dive into a few categories of mug shots around the NWC this season.

The “I’m wearing my dad’s shirt” mug:

This classic happens all the time in the college football world. What happens is that at the beginning of the year a team doesn’t have all of their team gear ready (polo’s, jackets) so the SID has one or two community shirts/jackets that he puts on every player for their mug shot. The result is that a number of guys look like they’re 10 years old and they stole their big brother’s clothes. This year’s winner is Menlo. They have a number of examples of this gaff and the most egregious examples are here, here, and here. Brutal.

The “Mean Mug”

This is the #1 most brutal football mug shot. I’ve never understood the mean mug head shot. Are you in jail? Did you just find out you’re girl is cheating on you? What’s your problem buddy? Like I said a mug shot has never intimidated a sole on the football field or won a game. Buddy…you’re playing college football so smile a little! Here are some classic examples of this mug here, here, here, here, and here.

The “Pez Head”

This is a very rare mug shot and has a very close relation to the “mean mug”. The Pez Head is a move that some players will use in their mug shot when they really want to amp up the intimidation. The move is to tilt the head back while wearing the mean mug. The effect is to try to make yourself look even more intimidating but all it does is make you look like you’re trying to squeeze out a fart. We only had two Pez Heads in the NWC this year that are here and here. Congrats!

The “Holy Hair” mug

We do live in the Pacific Northwest so I shouldn't be surprised that many of the NWC rosters are littered with players “expressing” themselves through their hair. I guess I’m just old fashioned when it comes to the hair cut during football but there are a ton of filthy looking guys in the NWC this season. Whitworth was leading the conference last year in guys with hair like girls but as you can see the NWC has diversified in this category for the 2007 season. You can find some examples of these long hairs here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

The “Just Woke Up” mug

Come on bro….your parents are spending 20K plus a year to send you to college. At least you can get yourself in order.

The “‘Stache”

PLU has already been lauded for their “Class of ‘Stache” this year but here are a few more sweet mustaches in the NWC. Here are two ‘Cats with some not-so sweet lip love: here and here. Coaches still have the old rule of that you can grow the lip fuzz if it's "neatly trimed and groomed". Unless your name is Ron Jermey I think it's time to revisit this rule.

The "Crazy Eyes"

Now we already visted the mean mug but the "crazy eyes" is a different cat. Sometimes when you look into someone's eyes you can see they're a little offbase. I haven't see a crazy eyes in a while so enjoy it while you can.

The "Look At Me" mug

Like the PLU guys the lip hair is partly a gag and you'll see the attention seeker mug shot on every team or so. Now, it's probably more a rib than anything but some guys just try really hard to be different and it comes off forced.

That pretty much covers it. If you see any more classics feel free to post links up in the comments section.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The mean looking guys are scaring me.

Downtown48 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Downtown48 said...

Not a mug shot, but this should qualify in the team photo category. Who rubber stamped this???

www.uwec.edu/athletics/Fb/images/
0304/FBposterbig.jpg

You've got cut and paste each line up into the address bar to get this gem to show up...well worth it though...

Anonymous said...

That UW-Eau Claire picture is an oldie, but a goodie. It pretty much sums up WIAC football in one picture.