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Accusing another fan base of wearing jorts is the atomic bomb of SEC insults. As penetrating and debilitating insults go, it makes accusing LSU fans of smelling like corndogs seem like a "Knock, knock" joke.
Believe me when I tell you there is no insult that makes SEC fans more incensed. No insult that is so rapidly attacked as lacking in any basis of truth.
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| This really isn't a common sight in Gainesville, Fla. (Provided to SportsLine) |
For the unaware, according to my good friend Wikipedia, jorts are "short for "jean-shorts" ... a garment worn by women or men that covers the pelvic area, the buttocks, and the upper part of the legs (typically the part above the knee.) Jorts are types of shorts that are made only from denim."
I'm not exaggerating when I say this, there is no single article of clothing that an SEC man could be accused of wearing that would make the accused wearer angrier or provoke more rage. Not one.
But how did this happen? As a kid, everyone in Nashville wore jorts -- black people, Asian people, straight men, gay men, illegal immigrants. Basically, if you could wear jorts you did. I'll admit it, I wore jorts. And so did you, or you're lying. They combined the comfort of jeans with the airiness of shorts. Plus, man, they let your knees breathe.
There was no culture of idiocy being espoused by their wearing. But then, amazingly, circa 1995, jorts came in for ridicule in Nashville. It happened suddenly and without warning. Like 9/11. One day a kid wore jorts to school and left Algebra II that same day on the verge of tears. I knew how he felt because the fashion tides had similarly turned on me a year earlier for wearing a pink shirt.
Here today, gone tomorrow. That's the fashion world. Suddenly Nashville, like Paris and Milan, became a jort-free zone. At least for white people.*
*Interestingly, black men have escaped universal derision for wearing jorts. After deep contemplation I have two hypotheses for why this is: 1. Black men's dark legs look better in denim shorts than white men's pale legs; 2. White people are afraid to make fun of black people.
In the ensuing decade jorts continued their fall from grace. Each year they become more detested. The only way George W. Bush could decrease his approval ratings? Be photographed on his summer vacation wearing jorts. They're the denim-clad kiss of death.
I truly had no idea how hated jorts were in the Southeast until I started the Dixieland Delight Tour last year. As I traveled through the Southeast, without fail, the jort bomb was tossed with anger and derision from one fan base to another. Recklessly, without fear for the innocents, usually wearing khaki, incinerated along the way.
And it's not just one fan base accusing another. Ole Miss says Mississippi State fans wear jorts. Alabama says Auburn fans do, Arkansas says Kentucky fans do. And vice versa. It's really uncanny.
No fan base comes in for jort accusations more frequently than the Florida Gators. The Gators are the crown prince of the jort monstrosity. So much so that when I visited Gainesville last year, my friend Neville, a Gator grad, kept saying over and over again, "No jorts here. See, no jorts here." And he was pretty much correct.
