Maybe you’ve noticed the red trucker hat that Kyle Shanahan, the head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, has been wearing on the sidelines. Twitter certainly has.
“Kyle Shanahan’s hat might as well say ‘I Vape,’” one user tweeted in November.
Another wrote that the retro snapback, with its mesh back, flat brim and tiny 49ers logo, makes Mr. Shanahan look like he’s ready “to host an MTV Real World/Road Rules challenge.” It is “so San Francisco tech bro it’s almost cliché,” in the words of yet another.
Laugh all you want but the so-called Shanahat is sold out in advance of this Sunday’s Super Bowl between the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs, with no new stock until the end of February, according to New Era, the cap’s manufacturer.
The hat, which retails for $35.99, was selling on eBay for upward of $399.99 in recent weeks.
More than making him a Twitter target, the hat, which Mr. Shanahan designed himself in both red and black versions, and often pairs with a minimalist white 49ers jacket, has turned the 40-year-old coach into a style disrupter. He is arguably the first N.F.L. coach in years, if not decades, to strike a fashion-forward look on the football sidelines.
His fashion sensibility is not lost on his players. “I can’t wait to get home and tell my wife the head coach is wearing Yeezys,” Emmanuel Sanders, the 49ers wide receiver, told the San Francisco Examiner last October, referring to the Adidas sneakers by Kanye West. “I was like, ‘That’s cool, this is one cool coach.’”
Sure, other coaches do manage to make the occasional sartorial statement, for better or worse. Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots became famous for his hoodies, although he says his trademark sweatshirts are not a fashion statement: “I just put on whatever is there,” he has said. (Bill, it shows.)
And then there’s this year’s other Super Bowl coach: Andy Reid of the Kansas City Chiefs, who is often spotted wearing Hawaiian shirts. (In tribute, several Chiefs players sported Hawaiian shirts when they arrived at the Miami airport in advance of Sunday’s game.) But on game days, Mr. Reid wears the same team-branded polo shirts and wind breakers that have become the de facto uniform of N.F.L. coaches.
Things were not always so dismal. In the 1960s, coaches tended to dress like Fortune 500 executives in suits and ties, and several managed wardrobe flourishes that became part of their legacies (think of the Vince Lombardi’s camel coat, or Hank Stram’s red vest).
In the 1970s, Bum Phillips of the Houston Oilers wallowed in Texas-ness, patrolling the sidelines in ostrich-hide cowboy boots and a 10-gallon Stetson, while Tom Landry of the Dallas Cowboys established himself as a style maverick by sticking with the businessman fedora long after most American men ditched the look. Dan Reeves of the Denver Broncos wore GQ-dapper suits on the sidelines through the 1980s.
In the 1990s, however, the league mandated that coaches wear licensed team gear on game days, and all coaches now wear apparel by Nike, the official league outfitter.
Looking for a style edge, Mr. Shanahan worked with the league’s official cap maker, New Era, to design a hat inspired by the trucker caps he favors off-field. (A second coach, Bruce Arians of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers has also created a game-day hat: a red duckbill that looks like a newsboy cap.)
As the 49ers morphed from a 4-12 league doormat last season to a 13-3 conference champion, the Shanahat became a must-have.
Even so, Mr. Shanahan told his wife that he was thinking about wearing a different hat.
She “freaked out,” the coach was quoted saying in the San Francisco Chronicle earlier this week. “She tells me that was the reason we’re winning. I know it’s not, but if I don’t wear the hat and we lose, I’ll have to deal with that forever.”
Mr. Shanahan agreed to flat-bill it out for the rest of the year. After all, he said, “there’s only one game left.”
