Unshaven

[Bad Zebra]

The timing of this thread is interesting. As some of you may have noted, I have a big game Saturday. As it so happens, for the first time in my life, I am sporting facial hair... a neatly trimmed goatee.

I had a brief discussion with one of my partners early in the season who has been to the state finals and he mentioned that they generally don't select officials with facial hair...it's not explicit or spoken, but that's just the way it is. They also avoid anybody carrying more than 15 pounds of extra weight as well. Again, just the way it is. At that time I said "if I get to that point, I'll shave it" and I didn't think much about it again until this week.

As it so happens, I have received my best schedule ever this year, despite the new facial hair. I was conflicted about it because I'm not sure if the powers that selected me know if I had a goatee. As a result, I've decided I don't want to make it an issue, so I am going to shave it off before I leave the house tomorrow morning.

Reading the comments in this thread up to now have more or less affirmed my decision.

And here's a funny side note...our local newspaper posts the mugshots on their website for anybody who has been arrested on a daily basis. I live in a county of about 500,000 people and this IS Florida so the list is pretty long some days. As an experiment, I looked at every mugshot over the past 7 days and counted and calculated how many were clean shaven and how many had beards or moustches. 73% of the males arrested had some form of facial hair. I don't know if that proves anything, but I find it interesting that 3/4 of (alleged) criminals have facial hair.