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" This week, The Watcher sat down with Steve Hutchinson, the 7-time Pro Bowl offensive guard for the Minnesota Vikings and Seattle Seahawks, and two-time All American for the Michigan Wolverines. Now retired, Hutchinson does many things, none of which The Watcher cares about except wearing watches. ESQUIRE.COM: What watch are you wearing right now, Steve? Steve Hutchinson: Right now, I have my Panerai 217. It&amp;#039;s 47 mm, with a left-handed crown! It&amp;#039;s a big watch, but also a watch nerd&amp;#039;s watch. It&amp;#039;s a mechanical wind; just a great watch. Stallone has one! It&amp;#039;s also shot up in value since I bought it. ESQ: It&amp;#039;s a manual wind, too. That&amp;#039;s a real watch-lover&amp;#039;s watch. You don&amp;#039;t see that on a lot of pro athletes. How did you get into watches? SH: It was around 2004. I was living in Seattle... we had a couple of guys when I was with the Seahawks who were into watches. You know, I never had any jewelry. I never had any necklaces or earrings or whatever. I&amp;#039;m not a jewelry type of guy. But when you get to the NFL you start dressing up more, going to nicer dinners. So you need something to accent what you&amp;#039;re wearing. So\u2014and you&amp;#039;ll get a kick out of this, Watcher\u2014I got a Breitling Bentley 6.75. ESQ: The official watch of the NFL Draft.  SH: Yeah, they have it in the contract. You have to wear Breitling. No, but seriously, going back to the 217 and it being 47mm, before this big watch thing, Breitling was the biggest option. [Hutch&amp;#039;s wrists are gigantic, obviously.] I&amp;#039;ve had some really good watches, major names, but it was rare that it didn&amp;#039;t look like I was wearing a lady&amp;#039;s watch. ESQ: Those are huge; I think they go up to 49mm. SH: Well, that was how I got into Breitling. That was why I think you see a lot of NFL guys wearing them. Everyone on the team had one. But then I bought my first Panerai and I was hooked. To me, if you want something really unique and cool, you sort of have to go in a more understated direction. If you&amp;#039;re a pro athlete, a lot of times you&amp;#039;re in a bar or an airport and you really have to put out this signal that you don&amp;#039;t want people coming up to you, talking about football, and so on. But if you&amp;#039;re in a bar and you see a guy wearing a really unusual watch, I&amp;#039;ll strike up a conversation. Panerai was like that for me; it was something not everybody was into. ESQ: How long has it been your everyday watch? SH: I mean... I can do anything with this watch. I wear it to Mexico to scuba dive. I wear it out. I have been wearing it on a rubber strap for ten years and all I&amp;#039;ve had to replace is the strap! &amp;#039; ESQ: A rubber strap isn&amp;#039;t something you&amp;#039;re going to show off at the club. SH: No! It will look stupid when I&amp;#039;m pouring Ace of Spades. (Laughs) ESQ: So tell us about the Panerai you&amp;#039;re wearing now. SH: It&amp;#039;s my new one, a PAN 339... it&amp;#039;s a brown ceramic dial and case. ESQ: That&amp;#039;s an unbelievable watch. I love that watch. SH: Yeah, my wife got me that for our anniversary. It has the brown suede-ish feel. Everything is brown. It&amp;#039;s a watch you wear when you&amp;#039;re going out here in Nashville, where we live now. Most of the big watches you see are black and chrome or silver. This one is different; it doesn&amp;#039;t look like anything else. ESQ: Did you make up an excuse to buy it? SH: I had just signed with the Vikings. ESQ: That was the only way to justify draining out my kid&amp;#039;s college fund to buy a watch, by creating these false milestones in my life. What about your last one? I know you got a JLC World Time. Another incredible watch. SH: That one is probably the coolest one I have. It&amp;#039;s a world time and has an alarm. It has the 912 movement, with a world time indication that shows the time in all 24 time zones. It has a mechanical vibrating, buzzing alarm. It really works; it can wake you up. ESQ: One thing I love about your collection, Hutch, is the progression of knowledge. You started with the Panerai 217, then the 213, and then the 235, a GMT in white gold they only made 250 of. Talk about a watch nerd&amp;#039;s watch! SH: That&amp;#039;s the kind of watch you buy if you don&amp;#039;t care if other people know what it is, you know? Which for me is the best kind of watch. Most people, if they spend that much on a watch, they want you want to know it. But this is the most understated of any Panerai. ESQ: Are there any other watches you wear regularly? SH: You know, I rotate them in a daily way. As you start getting watches and building your collection, you think about different brands, watches that are really unique and distinctive. But I also have a white gold Rolex Day-Date II, with diamond markers. That&amp;#039;s like the blue blazer you need to have in your closet, or the black suit. It&amp;#039;s something every man has. If you have to wear a tux and you want one show piece of jewelry, that&amp;#039;s the one. Everybody knows what a Rolex is; in that way it&amp;#039;s the opposite of Panerai or Jaeger Lecoultre. I keep it in the case 9 out of 10 days a year, but it&amp;#039;s an heirloom that I&amp;#039;ll give to my son.  ESQ: And finally... what&amp;#039;s your grail watch? SH: I understand I will never buy it, but if I were a billionaire I know the watch I would want was the Panerai tourbillon. I&amp;#039;m just a Panerai guy. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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