When one thinks of interesting bowling pants, as one often does, where does one’s thought process start? Maybe present-day Kyle Troup, which naturally leads us to Hall of Fame member and Kyle’s father, Guppy Troup. Possibly Ernie Schlegel and that incredible jumpsuit. Perhaps “Joe Paluszek,” whose legal name is Joey Pants.
These are all fine examples of exquisite fashion, but they’re more about the individual personalities of those involved. There was a time, though, toward the end of 2013 and into 2014, when an entire group of friends (i.e. the Ebonite staffers) began wearing bright, solid-colored pants.
The idea served its intended purpose, making Ebonite players stand out immediately and prominently, which is what most brands in most industries want. It also forced people like Chris Barnes, already known as Barney, to wear purple pants and resemble Barney the Dinosaur.
The bright-pants era peaked, in this writer’s opinion, at World Series of Bowling V, held at South Point Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas in late 2013. With so many players wearing so many vibrant pairs of pants, the vision of one guy walking by in bright red pants combined with the vision of two guys in two different bright shades of blue combined with a whole group of them forming an retina-singing rainbow coated with several contrast-based Photoshop filters was, some would say, even more compelling than the bowling.
One of the best clashes (pun intended) at WSOB V was Tommy Jones versus Josh Blanchard, whose legs combined to look like a tacky Christmas party under operating-room lights, in the PBA Scorpion Championship. Plus, it was a good match, if you care about that whole bowling thing.
Red (Blanchard) defeated green (Jones), which is statistically probable in a game of roulette and yet those greens are still there to make sure a red/black bet is not quite 50/50, giving the house the edge. On the theme of red/black, Blanchard’s next opponent was Tom Smallwood, wearing a nice pair of black slacks.
Below is a clip from our recap of this event in which we discuss the pants. For those interested in what happened after this clip cuts: Blanchard and Smallwood went to what might well have been the at-the-time longest roll-off in PBA history. Smallwood won the roll-off in the fifth round, then went on to defeat Marshall Kent in the championship match.
Fashion, they say, is cyclical. Will we get to see another bright-pants era in the near or distant future? We can hope.