Whitney Cummings tells a great joke about how men’s sartorial choices explain their desire to watch sports in the first place. “You guys are so obsessed with sports that you will wear jerseys for teams that you’re not even on but you wish you were,” says Cummings. “That’s like me watching Grey’s Anatomy in scrubs.” It’s a smart point. Men who wear jerseys for teams they wish they were on—in other words, men who wear jerseys—often seem to be driven by hero worship or fierce hometown pride. Think LeBron James in the former instance or David Ortiz in the latter.www.alermia.com So when Nike announced this spring that for the first time it would offer men’s sizes for the official jerseys of the U.S. Women’s National Team, it raised an interesting question: What happens when jerseys cross gender lines from the women’s side to the men’s?Philadelphia Flyers No one blinks when a woman dons a Brady or Ovechkin, but how many guys will sport the Wambach? The image I most often associate with the 1999 Women’s World Cup, still the nation’s most iconic and important soccer triumph, is stands full of pre-adolescent girls, some of whose dads—possibly also their coaches—had brought them to the stadium to watch and scream for Mia Hamm, Julie Foudy, and Brandi Chastain. In today’s version of that image, will the dad be wearing an Abby Wambach or Alex Morgan kit?Ottawa Senators Some of these fathers—and other male fans—might wear the U.S. Women’s National Team, or USWNT, jerseys out of national or team pride. Others, meanwhile, might wear them to make a statement.
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