Miami defensive back OJ Frederique Jr., right, is one of many players who are now wearing biker-style shorts rather than traditional pants with knee pads. Todd Kirkland / Getty Images

Deion Sanders and Kirk Herbstreit don’t like it, Tate Sandell is getting mocked for it, but it doesn’t look like the trend of college football players wearing biker-style shorts is going away any time soon.

Sandell was one of the latest to, ahem, take it in the shorts Saturday. The Oklahoma kicker went with the biker-shorts look again Saturday in the Sooners’ game against the Tennessee Volunteers, prompting ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreit to say he was wearing “Daisy Dukes” — a reference to the denim shorts worn by Daisy Duke in “The Dukes of Hazzard” TV show from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s.

“That should be a penalty. Dressing like that should be a penalty,” Herbstreit said.

But whatever Sandell is wearing, it’s working. He made all four of his field goal attempts against Tennessee on Saturday, including three longer than 50 yards. He entered Saturday 3-for-3 from 50-plus yards and 6-for-7 from 40 to 49 yards. He had made 93.3 percent of his field goal attempts and was 23-for-23 on extra-point attempts heading to Week 10.

Kirk Herbstreit wants a penalty called on the Oklahoma kicker for wearing short pants pic.twitter.com/1glO9LlgGV

— CJ Fogler 🫡 (@cjzero) November 2, 2025

Colorado head coach Sanders said in July he’s not down with the look.

“Let’s do something about the uniforms,” Sanders said. “We’ve got guys in biker shorts. That makes me sick because I’m a football guy — I played this game at a high level and I have so much respect for this game. How can we allow guys out there in biker shorts, no knee pads, no nothing, literally pants up under their thighs, and that’s cool?”

Even though several players have been wearing shorts instead of pants for a few years now, the NCAA’s rulebook mandates that pants must be worn. The “Mandatory Equipment” in Rule 1, Section 4, Article 3 says that pants, helmets, shoulder pads and knee pads must be be worn as protective equipment. The NCAA rules also state that knee pads must be covered by pants and that the pants and pads must cover the knees.

Referees could enforce wearing pants but typically don’t, since there doesn’t seem to be pressure from coaches or the NCAA to do so. Players like the increased freedom of movement they get from wearing shorts, even if it does leave their knees exposed.

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♬ original sound – ESPN

Nov 2, 2025

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Alex Valdes is a trending news reporter for The Athletic. Alex was previously a writer at CNET and MoneyTalksNews, a web content manager at Tipico, a sports editor at NBC Sports and MSNBC, and had various content roles at Microsoft.