The 49ers' season may be over, but speculation over the sartorial choices of coach Jim Harbaugh remains. As anyone who's watched a Niners game in the last three years can attest, Harbaugh favors a pleated-front chino as his sideline attire, leaving more fashion-forward viewers wincing and reinforcing to others his singular focus on football and nothing but.
With the ink not even dry after the Niners' crushing NFC Championship loss to the hated Seahawks, notable pants-seller Bonobos is rubbing salt into the wounds by offering Harbaugh $10,000 to the charity of his choice in exchange for allowing them to outfit him with a brand-new chino selection. "The sports media," they write, "is alarmed," and "there is a growing public suspicion you are housing a family of squirrels in the excess fabric of your khakis." They've even brought Harbaugh's wife Sara into the mix. Mrs. Harbaugh made waves when she refused to take responsibility for the pants to CBS. “I’ve thrown them away many of times. I’ve asked him ‘Please, pleats are gone. Wear the flat front."
Harbaugh is reportedly a fan of $8 Dockers from the nearest Walmart, a fact which did not go unnoticed by Docker's parent company Levi's, which recently sent Harbaugh a care package of Dockers khakis sans pleats (and which also has some leverage, what with that Levi's Stadium and all).
We've frequently sympathized with Harbaugh's wife during the coach's vein-popping and coronary-inducing sideline antics, and if she wants a different look, we encourage him to pursue it as a family (and not because of a clothing company's marketing ploy). And it sounds like he's considering making a now that sports superstitions are gone for the season: his wife told CBS that “I still love him but he did say next year he would make a change if it was that important.”
As for us, we like Harbaugh just the way he is, endearingly in pleated dad-hips and all.
