Steve Slattery is remembered in Chris Lear’s “Running with the Buffaloes”, the story of the 1998 University of Colorado’s men’s cross country season, as the talented freshman kid that shows up in basketball shorts down past his knees the first day of practice. It’s a humorous detail in an amazing piece of writing, but that detail was a common phenomenon in the late 90’s among young male runners. This was when every high school kid was tripping over Nike Jordan basketball shorts, even the white skinny ones on the cross country team.

I had a similar experience. I grew up in rural Douglas County, where it was already considered “gay” that I ran and didn’t play football. There was no way I was going to further provoke ignorant hicks, that were already throwing bottles at me and yelling “run Forrest run” every half mile of my daily jaunts, by wearing short shorts. John Stockton didn't help my cause, but the greatest basketball player of all time wore short shorts. Was WIlt Chamberlin less of a man because of his attire? Did he sleep with less women? Obviously not.

I had never even considered wearing split shorts before college. I’m not even entirely sure I was aware they existed. It’s difficult to reflect why, when we selected uniforms during high school that every male athlete on the team was shoving each other out of the way to grab the largest shorts available.

It’s hard to imagine it was the hip-hop cultural influence, even though both affluent and deprived white kids were wearing a brand called FUBU, which was made by African-Americans and was an acronym “For Us By US,” or maybe not. My time during high school was when the hip hop culture really started to integrate itself into mainstream America or well...white suburbia. When white kids begin to drift away from the flannel shirts and grunge era of the early 90’s and flock towards a culture they had no real business identifying with. That however was harder to argue when the hottest rap artist of the time was a Caucasian from Detroit with the name Eminem. That’s a whole other long discussion, but what I’m asking is, “is this the reason it was no longer acceptable to wear short shorts?” Does popular culture influence the running community’s fashion sense?

It seems now that short shorts are not only acceptable among high school cross country athletes, but popular and very valuable. It was only two years after I graduated high school while working at a high school running camp in 2002 that I was offered $250 cash for a pair of Nike split shorts made for the Moroccan Olympic team. I had to refuse, but since then have noticed a change among high school runners regarding shorter apparel.

I had my awakening in college that short shorts were not only more comfortable, but bad ass. It seems that so had the rest of the young running community. Where did this change come from? Was it the resurgence of the running scene with athletes like Alan Webb and Dathan Ritzenhein doing big things in little shorts? Maybe it was the pop culture happening of the “emo” scene or other mainstream influences? I don’t have the answers.

Despite mainstream America still not being very accepting of a dude running down the street with most of his upper thighs exposed, I’m still happy that the acceptance of high performance bottoms among the running community is progressing. This has allowed many of us to experiment with half tights and the even bolder ones like Matt Barnhart with Speedos. I simply can no longer run in basketball shorts. It seems no longer can Steve Slattery. Have I conformed to popular culture among the running community or do I just like getting compliments on my legs?