Retro College Basketball Flavor

If and when I become president of our fine country my first order of business will be to relax all regulations on tattoos in the military but in the same afternoon I’m enacting two new national holidays: the day after the Super Bowl will become “Vince Lombardi Day brought to you by Advil” (yes, I’ll sell corporate sponsorship and wipe out the deficit) and the first day of the NCAA Tournament will be the Kars 4 Kids’ Valvano Day. There really isn’t a better 24 hours in sports than the tip-off of March Madness. Your pool is still intact, you are optimistic about your underdog picks and ball gets run all day. No work gets done. According to a source that could have made this number up but I don’t have the time and resources to check, $1.9 billion in wages is lost by employers during March Madness.

You should always stretch before you run so I have been watching the conference tournaments so that I don’t shock my system come Thursday. As a Seton Hall alumni my interest lies firmly on the Big East (I walked out of their 22-point loss to end a crummy season). Last night Butler played Creighton, Lou Carnesecca would be rotating like the perfect jump shot in his grave if someone told him that Butler and Creighton were in the Big East. Oh wait, Louie is still with us. I’ll speak for him and say that he is nonplussed that a team from Omaha, Nebraska was playing at MSG last night and further than the geography, we are disgusted that they rolled in wearing these boring uniforms when they had so much panache 35 years ago. If we are going to take Creighton, at least give us the Baby Blue Jays. Yes I am an old man—I pay bills through the mail and I don’t think there will ever be a basketball squad better than the first Dream Team—but I long for when style points had nothing to do with who could do the best “Dougie” after they made a lay-up. Is the “Dougie” still a thing? I’m very old. But not too old to remember when college basketball shorts were the height of coolness.

Think of when LJ and the Rebels were Runnin’ with the mustachioed man on their thighs, Mateen Cleaves, in Grecian trim, crossing over the Gators and Valvano’s boys mowing down Michael and Phi Slamma Jamma in shorts that read “PACK.”

Dudes who did think of those and more teams from the era when the Orangemen and Redmen still existed are the founders of Retro College Cuts. They are “passionately dedicated to bringing high quality, unique vintage college basketball apparel to the market and are proud to offer the industry’s first ever retro, replica game shorts,” the founders say. “As the only brand truly dedicated to vintage College Basketball apparel, we aim to be cultural anthropologists, bringing you the artifacts of great teams of the past while breathing life back into them once again. We look forward to sharing our passion for the game with you and we hope you enjoy some great memories as well as a great product whenever you wear the Retro College Cuts brand.”

They sound dope, right? Even cooler, they are offering 10% off specifically for Inked readers, all you have to do is use the discount code: INKED10

Don’t sleep on copping the ’98 URI Rams shorts, the discount is good through 3/31/15.