Facial Hair No Longer Apparent On McFarland
Am I ever glad I made it by Wake Forest’s basketball practice today. Otherwise I’d have missed the scoop of the season.
Chas McFarland is clean-shaven.
McFarland, if you’ve haven’t been paying attention, was threatening to shave his mustache after Saturday’s game against Georgia Tech because he said it itches. But he didn’t feel he could because the Deacons, at the time, were on a four-game winning streak and he didn’t want to jinx his team. Talk about loyalty and commitment.
Well after Wake lost at Virginia Tech Tuesday night, McFarland made good on his threat and showed up today with no ‘stache. I didn’t even notice it when I said hello before practice, but of course even when he had it you had to look really hard to see it. Then somebody mentioned he was clean-shaven, and after getting up close enough I confirmed that was indeed the case.
When he came over for water late in practice, I asked him how many razors he wore out taking his mustache down. He said he used a trimmer.
I didn’t even razz him about our “Battle of the ‘Staches” challenge because I could tell from the way he was talking on Saturday he wasn’t going the distance. But he still has time between now and graduation to get back in on the competition, which would be triggered by Wake making it to the Final Four. And of course, as I said before, I’m willing to take on all comers—so long as they play basketball for Wake. I’ll even take on the walk-ons, though I don’t see a lot of threats there.
UPDATE: Derrick Jackson, who along with his son Joshua are two of the most dedicated Wake Forest fans around, emailed me to say that our Battle of the ‘Staches reminded him of a classic Bugs Bunny Cartoon called The Rabbit of Seville, in which Ol’ Bugs dumps both hair restorer and “Figaro Fertilizer’’ on Elmer Fudd with some hair-popping results. He said I’d better hope that nobody on the Wake team gets a hold of that stuff, or I’d be trounced. He sent the link. The pertinent part starts at about the 5 1/2 minute mark, but you’re obviously going to want to watch it all.