The Truth About Haircuts

This past weekend, we had the good fortune of spending some extended time in the company of a 93-year-old man. For those of you who hear this news and assume that we've started an outreach program to assist the elderly, we assure you that this is not the case. The man in question is our grandfather. (You should know by now that we don't do community service around here.)

In any case, this visit spawned a number of noteworthy moments, but perhaps none more memorable (at least from a sports perspective) than the one that occurred during Saturday afternoon’s Florida-LSU college hoops matchup.

With Florida center Joakim Noah at the line, our grandfather – who watches the games, though it is never clear how closely he does so – suddenly blurted out:

“Well, is this a boy’s game or a women’s game?”

(It also should be noted here that he’s prone to blurting out sudden and random topics of conversation.)

It was not apparently clear what he meant by this comment, so we simply went ahead and responded, “It’s a men’s game.”

By way of explanation, our 93-year-old companion added, “I saw a player with long hair.”

Ahh… now we understood what was going on. Our dignified conversational accompaniment had noticed Noah’s exceedingly bouffant ponytail and, being 93 and perhaps not the most well-traveled man in the history of humankind, he assumed that any individual with a ponytail must be a woman.

We proceeded to explain that this was still in fact a men’s college basketball game and this player just so happened to have donned a ponytail as his hairstyle of choice.

To this, our esteemed observer commented, “I don’t know if he’s off in his brains or what.”

We believe, though we can’t be certain, that this was his way of saying, Wow, that hairdo is completely played out.

Take note, Joakim – your current style is not playing well with the 85-and-over set, as one of its members believes that you’d have to be either a) a woman or b) completely out of your gourd to sport your current ‘do.

And while we’re not necessarily agreeing with his assessment that you look like a female, a crazy person, or a female crazy person, we have to admit that we do kind of see this as some kind of sign from above (and by “above,” we mean “age bracket above us”) that it might be time to change up your look.

Feel free to take this advice or leave it, but just know that before this season, our grandfather was watching some Suns-Mavs highlights and uttered a few choice words about the Suns’ point guard and the Mavs’ power forward having mangy, unkempt manes. (He specifically said that the guy on the Mavs looked like a “gangly old witch.”)

Not long thereafter, both Steve Nash and Dirk Nowitzki suddenly surfaced sporting dramatically shorter hair. Coincidence? You decide.

We’re just saying, there’s more to this whole thing than you realize.