Last night, the 2024 women’s college basketball tournament concluded, with the South Carolina Gamecocks defeating the Iowa Hawkeyes. Aside from the recent success of the women’s basketball program, sports teams from the University of South Carolina have not been particularly good historically. Though the school was founded in 1801, South Carolina’s first national championship in any sport didn’t come until two centuries later, in 2002. Nevertheless, in the ’90s, apparel from the school was very popular. Specifically, this classy cap was a common sight hundreds of miles away in New Jersey:
Another oft-spotted headwear option in that area originated from a school thousands of miles across the country, Oregon State:
I present without comment the fact that this image originated from Dicks.com.1
Both of these are a style called the “Bar” hat, made by sportswear brand “The Game”. Bar hats were particularly popular at the end of the 20th century, displaying the names or nicknames of dozens of different colleges and their sports teams. The two above, however, were particularly widespread sources of juvenile japery. Yes, many an adolescent boy strolled into Lids at their closest Garden State mall to purchase a hat featuring a slang term for genitalia.
I was a teenager myself in that era, but I wanted a different option. In an effort to subvert the puerile humor of others, I sought out the single goofiest Bar hat I could find. After much contemplation, I opted to rep the University of California, Santa Cruz:
Go Banana Slugs!4
Back to South Carolina, though, and their matchup last night. I know that a “hawkeye” is “a native of Iowa”, a much cooler demonym than “Iowan”. However, I recently had the realization that I wasn’t sure what a “gamecock” was. So, I looked it up, which revealed that it means “a rooster of the domestic chicken trained for fighting”. Oh.
And also, yikes. On multiple levels, that’s a terrible name for one of the best women’s college basketball teams in the country.
Footnotes:
Speaking of which, there’s a recent TV ad for the company that has repeatedly caught my attention.2 When Will Arnett says “Have I heard of Dicks.com?!”, it sounds like he’s about to launch into an epically filthy joke.3↩︎
That ad is archived here. ↩︎
A friend-of-the-site who shall remain anonymous informed me that once upon a time, Dick’s Sporting Goods did not own the Dicks.com domain name. It was, in fact, porn, as Archive.org can show you, if you really feel the need to confirm it, or you’re just feeling lonely.
It appears the retailer took ownership of the domain around the beginning of 2011.↩︎
Old school netizens know that banana slugs are fearsome, and indeed, one of the most vicious and pathological predators of human beings on the planet. ↩︎
