For nearly two decades, they accompanied Luke Adkins to watch his beloved Cincinnati Bengals. They were there as he celebrated the wins and agonized over the losses, far too many of the latter.
The years had taken a toll, stretched them thin and produced some fraying, but Adkins couldn’t give up on them. They had been through too much together.
Advertisement
Those orange, white and black zebra-striped Zubaz Bengals pants had survived pretty much everything, from the elements to tailgates to countless spin cycles. Everything except a divorce. Adkins’ ex-wife had gotten rid of his first pair of Zubaz and his autographed Vontaze Burfict jersey after they separated.
“Losing those pants was crushing. Do you know how many games and how many memories were in those pants?” said Adkins, a 37-year-old who lives just north of Cincinnati.
“I’m very over the top when it comes to the Bengals and putting on Zubaz pants was part of that feeling to get ready to go into that atmosphere and go to games. It allows you to morph into that zone where you are ready to go into the jungle and raise hell.”
Remember Zubaz, those baggy and zany zebra-striped pants that hit the market in the early ’90s and garnered a cult-like following? You know, the pants with the elastic drawstring waist that looked more like pajamas and were prevalent in football stadiums, wrestling rings and gyms?
If you didn’t have a pair, or at least won’t admit it, you certainly knew somebody who proudly wore them. They became a fashion staple of the ’90s, like Starter jackets, fanny packs and Champion sweatshirts, only louder and looser. They were easy on the waist, but not on the eyes. One sports publication in 1993 even ranked Zubaz as one of the worst things to happen in sports.
As we celebrate ’90s week at The Athletic, how do you ignore the pants that frankly, were impossible to ignore … and unsee?
“I googled them,” said Todd Durkin, a New Jersey native who is now a San Diego-based athletic trainer, working with Drew Brees and numerous other NFL players. “I think we called them muscle pants. I thought they were a Jersey thing. All the style, good and bad, starts in Jersey.”
Advertisement
As it turns out, Zubaz were an everywhere thing. In 1991, the company that was started by two Minnesota-based friends and weightlifting enthusiasts, Bob Truax and Dan Stock, made $48 million in profit, selling as many as 50,000 pairs in a week. But as quickly as the pants caught everybody’s attention, they were stuffed to the bottom of dresser drawers or discarded altogether. Fashion connoisseurs and spouses everywhere rejoiced.
Comfort, though, apparently never goes out of style.
A little over 10 years ago, Truax and Stock reacquired the Zubaz trademark and began charting the company’s second act. Now the Comet Clothing Company, it produces sweatshirts, T-shirts, hats, leggings and other clothing. The company recently agreed to a deal with Adidas, which will soon feature a line of football cleats, gloves and other products adorned with zebra stripes and the Zubaz brand name.
And yes, for the price of $39.99, you can still get those flashy and fun Zubaz pants in myriad colors and affixed with team logos.
“It was cool back then. Now, it can be that you’re just looking like a goof or you’re crazy or whatever. You’re just supporting your team,” Truax said. “It’s got a different connotation, but they’re still selling for sure.
“Quite frankly, when you’re talking about sports and fans and that type of thing, I guess really nothing should surprise you as far as the extremes some people will go.”
Nowhere is Zubaz more popular than Buffalo. The blue, white and red striped pants have become part of the unofficial uniform of the Bills Mafia, the passionate and loyal group of Bills fans who embody Zubaz’s “Dare to be different” slogan.
“You’ve got somebody from the Bills Mafia jumping off the camper with a beer in his hand and wearing a pair of Zubaz while he is flaming on fire and jumping onto a folding table like he’s in pro wrestling,” Truax said. “It doesn’t get much crazier than that.”
The early ’90s, when Zubaz sales were at its peak and the company had star quarterbacks like Dan Marino and John Elway, basketball star Scottie Pippen and model Claudia Schiffer wearing its product, were a whirlwind for Truax and Stock. But there’s always time for nostalgia.
Advertisement
They remember hosting six NFL quarterbacks, a couple of professional wrestlers and Jennifer Lopez, then a Fly Girl on the hit show “In Living Color,” in their suite at a Minnesota Timberwolves game. They remember the week of Super Bowl XXVI in Minneapolis, when the Zubaz headquarters was a must-stop for players and other athletes and celebrities in town. So many famous faces were coming through their doors that a local news station decided to do its newscast from there. They remember the time New York Knicks star center Patrick Ewing visited their offices and told them that only Starter has the license to make Zubaz-type pants.
Above all, they still marvel at how an idea that they drummed up for their own comfort and convenience became a pop culture phenomenon of sorts that persists to this day.
“If you look at some of the fads over the years, typically it’s an up-and-down thing because that’s cool, that’s funny, it’s whatever. But it’s not practical or it’s not comfortable or it’s too expensive,” Stock said. “Well, Zubaz never became uncomfortable. You have guys who are not going to wear a pair of zebra-striped pants to go to the movie theater, but they’ll throw them on to watch a game on Sunday. Absolutely.”
Truax and Stock owned the Twin Cities Gym together and they heard a common complaint from their fellow bodybuilders. Sweatpants and other gym attire were too restrictive. There was a need for baggier pants that gave muscular thighs and ankles more room to breathe.
The two men went to work and the light-fitting pants with the elastic waist and tapered bottoms were born in 1988 in a back room at the gym. They were called Zubaz, a name derived from the 1970’s street term that essentially meant, “in your face.”
Bob Truax and Dan Stock (For The Athletic)
Truax and Stock sold pants to gym members and fellow bodybuilders, mostly through word of mouth. Their initial sales pitches to retailers were ignored, rejected or mocked. However, their partnership with the popular pro wrestling tag team, The Road Warriors, who Truax and Stock met through an area gym, gave the company visibility. The Road Warriors wore the pants and passed out pairs around the locker room to other wrestlers. Professional athletes caught on and then took the product back to their respective locker rooms or clubhouses.
Truax and Stock bought fabric for the pants at local stores and quickly realized that the brighter and quirkier the pattern, the quicker it sold. The zebra stripe immediately rose to the most popular. A former prison guard, Truax used his connections to outsource the sewing to inmates at a women’s corrections facility in nearby Shakopee, Minn.
Advertisement
“It just took off so fast,” Truax said. “We had no clue what we were doing back then. None.”
A local J.C. Penney department store took a liking to the product and couldn’t keep up with the demand for the pants. Shortly thereafter, Zubaz were being sold nationwide in J.C. Penney stores. Zubaz also reached licensing agreements with the NFL and other professional sports leagues and that took the company to another level.
Soon, a group of NFL quarterbacks were posing together in Zubaz pants. Professional teams were stopping by the company’s headquarters when they were playing in Minnesota to get Zubaz gear. Zubaz was even designing uniforms for Arena League teams.
“We sold $10,000 dollars in December of ’88 and boom, we took some investors and the next year, we’re doing $2 million, the next year we’re doing $20 million and the next year we’re doing $48 million,” Truax said.
Truax and Stock knew they’d only be able to ride the wave for so long. Truax went on a sales trip to Los Angeles in 1991 and as his plane touched down, he could see Zubaz-like pants hanging for sale at a local gas station.
“They were everywhere,” he said. “We got knocked off immediately.”
With sales decreasing, the two men sold their shares in the company in 1996. Less than two years later, it went bankrupt. Truax and Stock went about their lives with Truax remaining in the clothing industry and Stock focusing on his health club. They ultimately bought the trademark back with no immediate designs on restarting the company. As the years went by, they noticed more and more trends from the ’80s and ’90s enjoying a second life. In 2008, they sought the same for Zubaz, albeit on a much smaller scale and e-commerce based.
“In the fashion business — if you want to call this fashion — everything cycles, and we knew that the ’80s and ’90s were going to be back,” Truax said. “So many of the things that you see now that are forefront in the department stores — Champion being the obvious ones — it was the same look in the ’80s and ’90s. We knew that was coming back, so we kind of hopped on that and decided to give it a shot. Here we are. It’s been successful so far.”
Advertisement
Truax projects about $20 million in sales for the company by the end of next year. The customer demographics are trending younger. Not only does the company have the agreement with Adidas, but it will relaunch a whole new Zubaz brand line directly to consumers in the spring. Whereas the zebra-striped pants once represented anywhere from 60 to 80 percent of the business, it’s now closer to 10 percent. Truax and Stock, though, understand the emotional and physical attachment that some have to the pants.
They regularly see pictures of brides and grooms and wedding parties decked out in Zubaz. There were two Kansas City Chiefs fans who actually got married in the parking lot of Arrowhead Stadium while wearing red, white and yellow striped Zubaz pants. Several years ago, members of the Detroit Tigers wore Zubaz on a road trip for a bonding exercise. Numerous minor league baseball teams have celebrated Zubaz-type promotions. Truax and Stock have even seen evidence of Zubaz permanent tattoos on customers.
“Initially, I think a lot of it was just this in-your-face mentality. ‘This is crazy and I’m going to wear this,’” Stock said. “It started in the gym business, which is just kind of testosterone-fueled and macho. ‘I need this, I need something comfortable because I’m so big and I don’t care what anybody thinks.’ But the common cliche that we always said was people bought their first pair for the look, but they bought the second pair for the comfort.”
That’s what Durkin remembers about the pants, the comfort. The former William & Mary quarterback recalls having a black and red pair that he would work out in.
“On your leg day, you had that room for growth,” Durkin said “It was a Jersey meathead leg day kind of thing.”
For others, the pants offer sentimental value, bringing those who wear them back to better times. In a 2012 article in Grantland, Stock once described Buffalo as “Zubaz ground zero.” Zubaz had its first and only brick-and-mortar store located in Buffalo although it closed after about two years. As the theory goes, the pants are so popular in Western New York because their ascent came during a time where the Bills were annually competing for Super Bowls. It also can’t hurt that ex-Bills stars like Jim Kelly and Thurman Thomas used to wear them. The Gronkowski’s, the fun-loving football family that lives in Buffalo, have long been Zubaz promoters.
Del Reid, co-founder of the Bills Mafia, considers Zubaz as essential part of his game-day attire as a Bills jersey.
Advertisement
“For the better part of 30 years, I guess that’s not even an exaggeration, I’ve had at least one pair in my dresser,” Reid said. “I get new pairs and they wear out. You would think they are only in Buffalo. I’ve been going to games for 30 years and I always see Zubaz. It’s so iconic.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Reid’s daughter bought Zubaz pants from Amazon and used the material to make face masks. When Reid tweeted out a picture of the zebra-striped masks, he was immediately deluged with requests about their availability to purchase.
Hey my kiddo made 3 more of these masks from an unused pair of Zubaz. If you’re interested in buying one (or 2 or all 3) from her then shoot me a DM. #BillsMafia pic.twitter.com/pvhKrgpWk1
— Del Reid (@DelReid) June 16, 2020
Adkins wound up buying a new pair of Bengals’ Zubaz pants after learning that his ex-wife disposed of the ones that he had since he was in middle school. He cherished those pants so much that he had a special hanger for them in his closet and they weren’t touched in the offseason.
“I’d get reactions from fans,” Adkins said. “They’d say, ‘I’d love to wear those, but they are a little too wild for me.’ But isn’t that the point? Football has always been a getaway, a way to escape the stresses of life.”
Adkins remembers wearing his Zubaz pants as he watched Bengals’ games with his father. Like the pants, those memories offer him comfort. On Sunday, he’ll take his 17-year-old son, who will be wearing Zubaz pants of his own, to see the Bengals play the Jacksonville Jaguars.
“It will be cool to start making memories,” Adkins said. “I’m really looking forward to that.”
(Top photo: Zubaz / For The Athletic)
ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57kWpncm9iZnxzfJFpZmpoX2V%2FcLLArJ%2Bip55ir6bDwKucZqyYmnq7scGrmGarpKe2sbHDZrGumpGveqS%2BwLOcZqyYlsFuwM6oomanppq%2FbrPAppxmnJGufA%3D%3D