Alabama's HOUNDSTOOTH HISTORY

FASHION
GREGORY ENNS
Nearly 30 years after Bryant’s coaching days, two young Tide fans wear houndstooth hats to last year’s A-Day game. The hats are a common sight at Tide
football games.
KENT GIDLEY/UA ATHLETIC MEDIA RELATIONS
Terry Saban kept warm in this houndstooth winter coat during
the Tide’s visit to the White House March 8.
KENT GIDLEY/UA ATHLETIC MEDIA RELATIONS
Shonda Ingram donned a houndstooth
cap during son Mark’s Heisman weekend
in December.
Since the Bryant days houndstooth
has been a sort of unofficial symbol of
UA and, to a point, Tuscaloosa. Take
the Houndstooth Bar or Houndstooth
Condominiums, for example. First
Lady of UA football Terry Saban even
donned a houndstooth-print coat for
the football team’s White House visit in
March to meet President Obama after
winning the national championship.
And Mark Ingram’s mom, Shonda,
donned a houndstooth cap during her
son’s whirlwind Heisman weekend in
New York in December.
Perhaps the best friend of houndstooth is the law. Because houndstooth
can’t be copyrighted, it’s pervasive. Anyone can use it.
It was actually [Gasp!] a New Yorker whom ‘Bama fans can thank for the
houndstooth hat.
Ken Gaddy, director of the Paul W. Bryant Museum, says Bryant had
always worn fedora-style hats or a baseball hat on the sidelines.
“So it wasn’t anything new for him wearing a hat,” Gaddy says. “But
when Joe Namath was being sought after by the New York Jets in 1964,
Sonny Werblin, owner of the Jets, was trying to get Namath to sign with
them. He gave Coach Bryant that hat during that time and I don’t think it
was planned, but then other people started giving hats to him. You’ve got
to remember the time, so that’s what everybody would have been wearing.
It was what men did.”
Gaddy says people often come into the museum with hats they claim
belonged to Bryant, but with no way to authenticate their stories they are
turned away. Bryant’s family donated the hats on display in the museum.
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