Part of the reason why I bought a Den season pass last year was so I could get a Den T-shirt.
I love college football, but I love free T-shirts with equal passion and zeal. The light blue, heavy cotton tee with Joe Bruin’s face blazed across it and the Bank of the West advertisement on the back made me feel like a true Bruin, like that pumped-up feeling a UCLA first-year student gets during all those congratulatory welcome speeches at the beginning of the year.
As I wore my Den shirt at my first UCLA football game last year when the team beat Kansas State, all I saw was a sea of homogenous crowds at the Rose Bowl with all the 8-clapping and the exclamations of “Go Bruins” and the playful high-fives.
It was unnerving at first. School spirit was a new phenomenon for me, since I connected school shirts with arduous physical education classes. I didn’t see the Den shirt making much of an individual fashion statement when thousands of other UCLA fans were wearing the same thing.
I realized then that college sports fashion is in a different realm than regular clothes. It really doesn’t matter whether I wear the same fan gear as the person sitting next to me because at the end of the day, we’re all sweating bullets in the same clothes and rooting for the Bruins. This is why sports and fashion rarely intersect, and when it does, it’s when New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady is marrying supermodel Gisele Bundchen or Dior makes a collection inspired by football jerseys. Otherwise, their roads are usually parallel.
Jana Suko, assistant director of marketing for UCLA Athletics said that the votes for this year’s shirt were close. Every spring, students submit their designs for a Den T-shirt and the Den Executive Board, made of the Den student group, narrows the decision down to five or six shirts for all of the students to vote on at the UCLA Athletics website.
Second-year undeclared student Marae Deleon said that she wears her Den shirt so she’d be known as a UCLA student. Third-year history student Robby Ireland said that he wears his Den to be a conformist and fit in with everyone else. Like these students, I wear the shirt for the same reasons.
There are some unique variations of their shirt, such as the Den shirt of fourth-year business economics student Karina Sterrett who cut a Den shirt from 2007 into a halter top, which was passed down to her by a former Bruin. Sterrett said that she hopes to pass down her Den shirt to future Bruins to keep the legacy going and to keep being part of the best student section in the world.
Sterrett’s shirt was an example of the way the Den shirt could be manipulated into something different from the masses.
I also realized it would be a flotsam and jetsam of disunity if there weren’t a standardized Den shirt, and our student section wouldn’t look nearly as cool on television if it weren’t a sea of blue. The shirt isn’t about fashion or whether the light blue compliments your eyes and skin tone. It’s about tradition, pride and sweating it out under the Pasadena sun at the Rose Bowl as the Bruins hammer out touchdowns.
At this past game, I received my second Den shirt that I got along with my second Den season pass. The Joe Bruin face is bigger, which I like, and the Bank of the West advertisement is still emblazoned on the back. And as I sweated it out in the sun at the past game against Washington State, and consequently got a Bozo-the-clown-grade sunburn on my nose, I really didn’t mind the whole wearing the same thing as everyone else. I just loved the feeling that I was part of the Den and the fact that we won. And also the fact that USC lost as the clock expired. Now that is when I truly felt like flailing my arms wildly, in my Den shirt of course.
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If you think the Den shirt should make a fashion statement, e-mail Jue at tjue@media.ucla.edu._