In the mid-’80s, Georgetown superstar Patrick Ewing began wearing a gray undershirt, reportedly so he wouldn’t catch a cold in the drafty gym. Soon, players all over the NCAA were into the layered look. “It’s always more comfortable to have cotton against your skin,” says D. L. Cummings, a sportswriter for the New York Daily News. Recently, though, the trend has been evolving. “Everyone on my team wears T shirts with the sleeves cut off,” says Zain Shaw, a small forward at the University of West Virginia. “They say it shows off their muscles.”
Shaw himself has gone the trend one better – or at least one weirder. “I was about to play ball with my friends and they started rushing me,” he explains. “I had only cut one sleeve off and I just left it like that ‘cause I didn’t have time to do the other.” Shaw says he was tickled to see a player from the University of Hawaii following his lead. The NCAA requires only that T shirts be the same color as the team jersey. Fair enough, and besides, who wants to clash?
