cheap sunglasses

[fitz13]

a friend of mine said he was given a hard time for wearing sunglasses in a game he did and asked me about it.

I normally don't ever wear sunglasses so I have never payed attention to it.

is there a uniform policy that says you should not wear sunglasses in a varsity game or is this just some rule some a board member decided to make up?

[ElvisLives]

There is no prohibition in the manual for sunglasses.
My opinions, for what they are worth:
Traditionally, sunglasses are not something that should be worn. However, they were not traditionally worn in baseball for more than a century, but look at what we have now. If you are on the east side of a N-S field for an early evening kickoff with clear skies, it would seem reasonable to wear sunglasses while the sun is above the artificial horizon. Once it gets down below the top of the grandstands, take them off. No reason for anybody else to wear them.

[ilyazhito]

That's fair. Use them when needed for visibility. I've heard about FBS and even NFL officials using sunglasses. I'm curious about whether it is actually OK for a college official to use sunglasses in the situation that ElvisLives describes.

[peterparsons]

There have been a few threads on this subject over the years. There's one in the Federation area where I posted a pic of an NFL BJ wearing a pair from a few years back.

I agree with Elvis. Wear them if you need them. I'm very sensitive to bright light and have a pair of decent (buy a good pair, cheap ones can do more harm than good as some of them just cause your pupils to open wider, allowing more damaging rays into your eyes) plain black sunglasses permanently in my kit bag. I don't need to (and don't) wear them just because the sun's out as the peak of the hat deals with direct sunlight, but when I do use them it's because of the combination of bright sunlight and the field surface, specifically the glare or reflection that can happen off such surfaces. This summer has been especially dry in the UK, so many of the fields we work on have gone straw/sand coloured and the reflection off of that sort of surface can make it very hard for me to see, so my sunglasses have had an above average number of outings this year.