Top 15 Sports Mullets of All Time

By Andy Fajardo
Love of Sports Correspondent

Simply put, a mullet is defined as a hairstyle formed by cutting the hair shorter on the top and sides of the head, with the hair on back left long and bountiful.

The relationship between the mullet and sports is a long and storied one. While the popularity of the mullet’s faded some since it’s glory days in the mid-‘80s and early ‘90s, the hairstyle of champions is kept alive by modern day mullet ambassadors such as Jared Allen and John Kruk.

In the hopes that we never forget the mullet’s reign in sports, I’ve compiled a list of the Top 15 athlete mullets of all time.

I used the standard mulletologist grading scale that takes into consideration each mullet’s overall body of work, which includes, but is not limited to, the following attributes: size, strength, flamboyance, innovativeness, bouyancy, longevity and flexibility.

TOP 15 ATHLETE MULLETS OF ALL-TIME

15. Larry Bird - “The Hick from French Lick” dominated the hardcourt with his blue collar no frills game, and shaped his mullet in the same fashion.  He basically defined the base model mullet and provided everyone on the list with the building blocks to work with.

14. Jose Canseco - While his rare combination of power and speed helped revolutionze the game of baseball, it’s his interpretation of the mullet that he might be more remembered for. He took the mullet, which is an amazing hairstyle to begin with, and gave it a latin flare, and the world’s never been the same since. His particular take on the hairstyle is called a “teja” in Spanish.

13. Deion Sanders - Some out there might contest that he had a jheri curl, and while I will agree he did, there’s still no denying he had it in the shape of a mullet. Deion is essentially the Jackie Robinson of mullets, his sweet do’ broke the mullet color barrier.

12. John Daly - What do you get when you take Larry Bird’s hair and add a case of Milwaukee’s Best, a fifth of Jim Beam and a carton of Winstons? John Daly’s sculptured coif, that’s what. Whereas generally all mullets can be characterized as being business up front and parties in the back, only Daly’s mullet can rightfully claim to party both in the back and the front.

11. Wayne Gretzky - When people call him “The Great One,” they are, in fact, paying homage to one of the best mullets ever to put on a hockey uniform. He essentially had a pseudo-mullet, which is little longer on the sides than the standard one. This gave him the flexibility to comb the sides back and give the illusion of a standard mullet when the situation called for it.

10. Kurt Rambis - Although his basketball skills were pretty limited, he was truly talented in two other aspects: winning rings and sporting championship quality mullets. Not to mention that for much of his career he also doned a molestache, which everybody knows was the real glue that held all those Showtime Laker teams together.

9. Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake - What separates him from the long list of other wrestlers who also adorned Kentucky waterfalls on their heads? The fact that his name is Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake.

8. Brian Bosworth - Little known fact: Bosworth’s mullet was drafted two spots before him in the NFL Draft after his hair clocked a sub 4.3 40-yard dash in the combine. His mullet had numerous run ins with the law and was out of the league after only two unsuccesful seasons with the Arizona Cardinals.

7. Mark Gastineau - Mark’s ex-wife and only daughter had a reality show called The Gastineau Girls, which had a successful two season run on E! The former single-season sack leader is rumored to begin shooting on his own reality show that’ll chronicle the daily life of his mullet. The show will be aptly named The Gastineau Curls.

6. Mike Piazza - He took his Bro-style mullet mainstream with those Pert Plus shampoo commercials in the late ‘90s. What many don’t know is the commercials were originally supposed to be shot a couple of years earlier for regular Pert shampoo. Reportedly, when Piazza showed up to the shoot, producers knew Pert was no match for his robust mullet, so the makers of Pert headed back to the lab to formulate a shampoo strong enough to handle his feathered neck warmer. Thus, Pert Plus was born.

5. Dennis Eckersley - Take one look at him and tell me he doesn’t have an eerie resemblance to Jeff Foxworthy.

4. Barry Melrose - If you were to print out Melrose’s thoughts, it would read something like this: hockey, eat, mullet, sleep, hockey, eat, mullet, sleep, mullet hockey.

3. Randy Johnson - You want height from your mullet? The Big Unit, who stands at 6-foot-10, has got ya covered. You want speed from your mullet too? Clocking in at 95+ mph, he’s got your number on this one, too. You want your mullet completely drenched in sweat? Yep, as you might have guessed you could put a check next to Johnson’s name there too. So, the bottom line is that Randy has one of the tallest, fastest, sweatiest mullets ever seen.

2. Jaromir Jagr - If this list was based purely on mullet strength, this guy would be No. 1 hands down. With the amount of curls this guy has flapping around back there you might as well call it a “curllet.” If growing a mullet was like karate, Jagr would be Bruce Lee. There are plans currently being put into place to cryogenically freeze Jagr’s head when he dies in order to preserve his luxurious locks in the hopes that future generations may one day be able to unlock its true powers.

1. Andre Agassi - His mullet had it all: mass, flair and, most importantly, attitude - or as I like to call mulletude. He was born to grow the most magnificent mullet the world’s ever seen, and tennis merely provided Agassi with the stage for him to showcase it. When the day comes that aliens land on Earth and ask our leaders for mankind’s greatest follicle achievement, all we’ll have to show them is the greatness that is Agassi’s mullet.

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