The World of Sports and Facial Hair

Football picks from people you don't know is exactly what you get on this site. And I went 1-4 in week 1. Maybe I should just quit now...

I was watching college football this weekend and saw a guy with some amazing facial hair, and it got me to thinking - who are the all-time greats in sports when it comes to facial hair? For those of you who don't know, PlayBoyd has some pretty amazing facial hair. There is a guy named Logan Mankins for the New England Patriots who looks surprisingly similar to Boyd, beard and all. If we put these two next to each other wearing Patriots hats I don't know that you could tell them apart. You wouldn't know which one has a Super Bowl ring and which leaves tracks on his chair at work. They even have similar specs. I have included a picture for your viewing pleasure (if you can call it that).

Whether or not baseball is a sport (see Boyd's post below), it is the source of much of the great facial hair in sports history. Rollie Fingers. Johnny Damon. The recent mustache from Jason Giambi. As a Dodgers fan I must mention Eric Gagne. Baseball has the market cornered when it comes to great mustaches and beards. Basketball has its share with Baron Davis and Kevin Garnett having some seriously sick beards/goatees/chin pubes. Football has a few, most notably the entire Patriots offensive line. Of course, Tom Brady looks exquisite with his occasional five o'clock shadow.

I planned to compile an ordered list of the all-time greats of sports facial hair, but after doing some research, I just can't seem to put them in any rank order. Here then, is some of the greatest facial hair in sports/athletics history in no particular order.



Adam Morrison - His facial hair is exquisite because it's so straggly and it looks like what a just blossoming teenager would grow. Combine it with his amazing bushy hair curtain and he's a winner all the way around. It doesn't quite qualify as a porn stache (see Jake Plummer) but it's a pretty solid effort.



Scott Speizio - Speizio gets points for creativity here. I rock a soul patch (with nowhere near the volume Speizio has) myself and would absolutely color it to match my uniform if I were a professional athlete. I wonder if he ever looked into getting the team logo on there somehow. The way the red matches his cap has a similar effect to the carpet matching the curtains. Nice.



Baron Davis and Drew Gooden - I'm combining these two because they have the exact same beard, even though it seems that Gooden is less concerned with grooming. Boyd posted a great picture of Rick Ross demanding his beard back from Baron, so you might want to find it out in our archives. I wonder how a beard of this magnitude impacts one's ability to stay cool in a basketball game. It seems like it would not be conducive to staying comfortable, but these two seem to pull it off. Gooden also has a reverse soul patch (a small landing strip on the back of his head) that puts him in the hall of fame as far as I'm concerned. His originality is tremendous.



Michael Phelps - He's got a great horseshoe look going on here. I assume he didn't go with this look during the Olympics because it looks like it would retain too much water. Phelps is not the greatest athlete of all time (swimming is not a sport, by the way - it's an athletic event) but the way his facial hair extends to cover the synlabial area of his orofacial anatomy is what gold medalists are made of. Tremendous effort here by Phelps.



Rollie Fingers - probably the most famous facial hair in sports history, Rollie sports what is commonly called the handlebar. For someone to be in the baseball hall of fame and be more famous for their facial hair is quite the accomplishment. This recent picture shows that the hall of famer still has what it takes for me to hold him in high esteem. You can really tell that Rollie takes his look seriously and wants to present himself in the best manner possible. I love it.



This Guy - I have no idea who this guy is, and I didn't bother looking into it because hockey sucks. What a retarded sport. It is clearly a sport, and clearly a sport I would suck at, but it's a complete waste of time. This guy's crop duster overcomes the absurdity of hockey and solidifies it's owner a spot in sports facial hair history. It looks as if his duster is rarely groomed; fitting for a hockey player.



Walt Frazier - his combination of the mutton chops with the chevron mustache is absolute classic, and I can only assume that the ladies loved it. What a tremendous pimp. Wilt must have had some major competition in Frazier. Look how stupid the guy next to him looks. Who can even compete? No one would want to go pick up on the ladies with this guy because they wouldn't stand a chance - they'd always be playing wingman. I am completely in awe of this setup. Truly, truly amazing. Two thumbs up.



Kimbo Slice - Kimbo gets added here because he has such amazing and full growth. It calls to mind that episode of Cheers where the guys have a beard growing contest and the winner is determined by how much beer he can soak up with his beard. Kimbo could certainly compete in that kind of a competition, as he actually makes Drew Gooden and Baron Davis both look like pansies. While Kimbo probably has this amount of facial hair so that he can take more punishment in the ring, his beard still merits special acclaim.



To put the full impact of facial hair in perspective, here is the one and only Peter Griffin.