Mike Dougherty's Blog

Too much pork at Hogs tailgate parties?

Odds are great that I shouldn’t go there, me being shaped the way I am — round in the middle and bald as an egg on the back of my head — but I have to address the sights I encountered Saturday:

I helped with our Razorbacks coverage of the Louisiana-Monroe game  that day at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock. My wife dropped me off on Markham and Fair Park near the stadium. Coming in from the west, we ran into the backed-up traffic just before Markham intersects with University and crept on in from there.

Lots of people were walking toward — and for some reason away from — the stadium and a bunch more were partying along the way from St. Vincent Infirmary Medical Center over to the stadium, mostly at the expense of the War Memorial golf course.

Because traffic was creeping, we could see the walkers headed both ways and the partygoers they were passing.

First, apparently, the latest fashion trend for women is to wear jean cutoffs with various forms of cowboy boots. Some of the jeans were “torn” and some were hemmed. The younger the woman, the more likely it was that her jean shorts had fringe unraveling. Scores of women were wearing that combination, many with some type of Razorbacks T-shirt or sweatshirt as a top.

A handful of them were attractive in their outfit. A few more were cute, but likely lacked the proper tan to be showing off their legs in front of 55,000 people. Many more were not properly toned to be showing their legs at all. The rest should not have worn clothes that showed they lacked a workout routine.

Second, some of the guys were just as bad. They were dressed in shirts and pants that didn’t fit them — by several sizes in some cases. Some of them showed every lump in their roly-poly bellies and backsides. But I wasn’t noticing them as much as the women. My wife, Nancy, who is an equal opportunity fashion critic, confirmed that both sexes were looking pretty paunchy in their U of A duds.

Of course, these people have every right to dress how they want to for a party before a football game and, possibly, for the game itself. I’m not saying they shouldn’t dress just as they did.

I’m just saying that maybe they should consider how they appear to a casual observer who happened to go by them at a slow pace on Saturday. I don’t mind if they dress that way.

Maybe they should know, though, that if they are wearing the latest trend because they hope to be ogled in a big crowd, they are having a different effect than desired. Chances are good that they’re being noticed for their portliness and not their pulchritude.

A longer version of this post may appear in this week’s editions of The North Little Rock Times, Cabot Star-Herald, Maumelle Monitor, Carlisle Independent, Sherwood Voice and the Lonoke Democrat. You can find online editions of our newspapers at www.pulaskinews.net and www.lonokenews.net.