Marquette’s 1977 Untucked Jersey
By: Sophia Annand
Prior to class this evening, I had no idea about Marquette’s Basketball history. I became extremely intrigued about Marquette Basketball culture and history when watching the ESPN “Untucked” documentary.
Marquette was not considered a successful team before coach Al McGuire came, he brought a whole different energy to the court. He lead Marquette to a National Championship in 1977.
The documentary goes into detail about the 1977 championship game and the backstory behind the famous untucked jersey. The untucked jersey came about because Maurice H. “Bo” Ellis a 1977 Marquette Basketball alum and star player wanted to major in fashion. In the ESPN documentary “Untucked” Bo Ellis states “Coach McGuire asked me what I wanted to major in and I looked at Coach McGuire and I said Fashion Designer… He said hmm thats interesting let me get back to you on that. “
Shortly after, when Bo Ellis had proved to be taking his education in fashion seriously at Mount Mary University his teammate Ulice Payne states “One day I asked why don’t you let Bo design our jerseys?” to Coach McGuire in the ESPN documentary.
The documentary shows how not only the jerseys are special but how the story behind the jerseys symbolizes a unique program with a very special coach and players.
Al McGuire was explained in the documentary as a coach who really took chances for his players. He was the only coach around that time who would even have considered letting one of his players design their own jerseys. When watching “Untucked” it appears that every other team at the time wore tucked in jerseys, this making a Marquette unique just in the way they presented themselves.
Al McGuire was a very special coach. I found an article by the Chicago Sun-Times that was published on March 23rd, 1977. The article states ”Neary is a senior who never made it as a starter on his high school team. He came to Marquette as a walk on and fought his way to a schloarship. He has played in 83 Marquette Games over the last 3 years and started all 30 this season, and never scored over eight points in any one of them.”
When Al McGuire was asked why he would start Neary over a more competitive and overall talented player his response was “I start him because he’s a 3.8 in mathematics and builds up our academic average,” said McGuire “He reminds me of me”
This article shows that for Al McGuire it simply was not just about basketball and winning or losing. No other coach at the time would have started someone simply because they deserved to play.
The Milwaukee Journal published an article on September 22,1977 about Marquette Students camping out for tickets. The article states “The four line up for basketball passes began when Marquette University students pitched 130 tents on the lawn behind the Brooks Memorial Union.”
This article shows that not only was the team and Al McGuire extraordinary at the time so we’re the students. Students went through everything to support their team. This whole time period where Al McGuire was coaching represents a completely different culture surrounded around Marquette Bas
On Twitter Marquette Basketball posted last years schedule. One of the players in the background is wearing a striped jersey. This made me think of when in the documentary “Untucked” they talked about how they weren’t allowed to wear one of their new uniforms because the stripes were distracting to the referees. Bo Ellis refers to this specific jersey as looking like a bumblebee.
I found it interesting that Marquette has a jersey with stripes regardless of this incidents. We see the players wearing tucked jersey in this tweet, but the ideal of having unique uniforms still lives on.
