The Playoff Beard: Making Athletes Look Stupid for a Quarter Century

As the Super Bowl approaches we as fans are being afflicted by one of the greatest travesties that comes upon the sports word, the Playoff Beard.  Both starting quarterbacks have been growing their facial follicles in the weeks approaching the big games and neither has found a favorable look.

The Playoff beard was started by NHL teams as a sort of good luck charm and has unfortunately transcended other sports.  These athletes choose to make themselves look like homeless vagabonds roaming the sidelines of their respective sports.  The beard in and of itself is favorable on almost no one,  it almost screams from ones silent face “ I am less sophisticated and articulate” or “look at me I can’t groom myself properly”.

In the case of the quarterbacks the grooming statement is even more peculiar because how they present themselves is a reflection on themselves and at a position that requires poise, attention to detail, absolute focus, and precision.  Allowing ones face to grow into a mangled hairy mess exemplifies none of these characteristics.

Aaron Rodgers did attend Cal Berkeley, a school and region renowned for its harboring of hippies, in recent history the school had students live in trees so that they would not be cut down.  They are known for protesting causes that are generally supported by the ungroomed, like marijuana legislation, and free love.  And maybe Rodgers is simply returning to his roots by donning the hippie facial hair.

For Roethlisberger the beard is not terribly different from his usually groomed and trimmed goatee, but as the playoffs carry on his beard grows thicker and stupider looking.  But maybe he’s just preparing for his offseason look, after all a grotesque and bushy beard is the facial hair I would expect an alleged sexual assailant to fashion.  Roethlisberger should at least consider this when styling his face and try not to look like a guy who goes to small towns to fornicate unconsensually with college students in bar bathrooms.

Now there is one playoff beard I must commend, it is a beard of epic proportion, one that is stylistically unmatched, and so grand it deserves its own identity.   That is the beard of Brett Keisel.  Like most beards it is extremely unattractive and even foolish looking but the by itself it is a work of art.  It is its own entity separate from the Steelers defensive lineman.  When the two combine and Keisel pulls his head gear over the monstrous facial hair it makes him looks almost alien in appearance.  Packers center Scott Wells may look up at some point in the game and wonder if he is blocking Chewbacca of Star Wars fame.

The Bottom line is the gimmick of the Playoff beard needs to stop.  Players making themselves look ridiculous for tradition is of no merit, it is not lucky, it is not cool, it only creates an unpleasant attraction that distracts from actual attributes the player might possess.