Hair rule? NFL must be joking

With college basketball aplenty, a new baseball season and what should be a very exciting NBA… With college basketball aplenty, a new baseball season and what should be a very exciting NBA playoffs coming up, it’s a wonder why football would garner any headlines right now.

Yet the NFL has made sure it’s still on the sports fans’ mind. One way the league has done this is by proposing a ban on long hair.

It was reported by the NFL Network that the Kansas City Chiefs proposed a new rule in which players wouldn’t be allowed to wear their hair long or flowing out of the back of their helmet. The league’s owners are expected to vote on the issue later in the month at a meeting in Florida. But I think I can save all the owners a little time by doing the voting right now.

No.

It’s an unnecessary and ridiculous rule. It’s legal to tackle a player using their hair if it’s hanging out of the back of their helmet, and any player with long hair should know that. If they still want to keep their hair long, why tell them no?

As the NFL Network’s Adam Schefter writes, the rule would help in that long hair would no longer “cover or obscure the names on the back of player’s jersey.”

And, of course, referees refer to each player by number when calling them for a penalty. Announcers have lists of each team’s roster with them in the announcing booths, where one of the items on the roster list is player number. Plus, can they read the name on the back of a player’s jersey from all the way up in the booth?

As far as I know, no player in the NFL has hair long enough that it completely covers the number on the back of their jersey. Oh, and there is also the front of player’s jersey, which too has their number, just in case there is a player with that long of hair.

So the covering up of a player’s name shouldn’t really be too much of a worry.

Also, long hair is a distinction. It’s much easier to recognize a player with long hair in the middle of a game, while action is going on, than a player without long hair. Wouldn’t making a player cut their long hair, or hide it in their helmet, just make picking them out of all players on the field more difficult?

Sure, you can read their name on the back of the jersey, but what if they’re facing forward? You’d have to think about their jersey number and then remember who it is. And what if you’re just too lazy to look below someone’s neck? You’ll be lost.

The NFL should try to play up to this demographic more: the lazy. If I don’t want to move my eyes below a player’s neck, yet I want to know what’s going on, it’s not going to work out in the current NFL format. That’s why certain players should have to grow their hair long. Other plays should have to wear top hats while playing, and others could wear those multi-colored hats with propellers, or just no hat or helmet at all.

But wearing no helmet could be a safety issue, which is another reason the Chiefs want to rid the NFL of Troy Polamalu’s long, luscious locks. But as I said earlier, if a player knows the rules, and still wants to keep their hair long, it’s absurd to not allow it.

If a player is tired of opposing players using his hair to tackle him, he can cut it. Edgerrin James did so when he played for the Colts, as did Ricky Williams while he was on the Dolphins.

It’s amusing the Chiefs suggested this, seeing as how they were involved with one of the more aggressive hair pulls in recent memory. In October of 2006, against the Steelers, Polamalu had intercepted a pass and was running down the sideline when Larry Johnson ran up from behind him and yanked him to the ground solely using his hair. Johnson continued to pull the hair even after he brought down Polamalu, and was given an unnecessary roughness penalty.

If the NFL wants to ban something that’s a safety hazard to its players, ban them from being around televisions.

That’s right, make sure no players are allowed to own or watch that magical box of goodness that you and I love oh so much.

Last week Denver Broncos wide receiver Brandon Marshall severed an artery, a vein and a nerve in his forearm, as well as tendons to five muscles after slipping and putting his arm through a TV, the Associated Press reported. Marshall, who underwent surgery on Saturday, is expected to be out around three months.

When it was first reported, Marshall said he slipped on a McDonald’s wrapper, sending his arm through the TV. A few days later he admitted to wrestling a family member while the incident happened.

So why hasn’t the NFL sprung into action here? There isn’t any documented evidence of a player missing time because his hair was pulled, so why is that more of a safety issue than TVs?

The only logical reason is that the NFL owners have an under/over bet of 40 websites and newspapers using the always-hilarious “Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow” headline.

I say the over.