I’m watching the OU-Texas game; first time I’ve seen OU this year (I live on the west coast), so it may be a stupid question.
But one of the OU players has super long hair, literally down to his ass. I guess he’s just a lineman, so he’s not likely to be carrying the ball much, but how is this legal?
For one thing, his hair completely covers his number. For another, if he picked up a fumble or something and ran with the ball, it would be easy for his hair to get in the way, whether in a defender’s eyes, or causing an inadvertent horse collar.
If it needs to be said, I have no interest in how long anybody wants to grow his hair in daily life, it’s just a football rules question.
PSXer is right about the tackling. A quick Google search says that in the NFL, hair that sticks out of the helmet is technically part of the uniform, so grabbing it is fair game. Sometimes guys get chunks of hair pulled out. And covering up the number doesn’t seem like a big deal. As long as the refs know which player it is, they know if he’s ineligible and downfield.
One would think that they wouldn’t need to rule against it, and that just making the hair tackle-eligible would be enough incentive for the players to keep it short. But then, one would think a lot of things.
I’ve always been surprised by that, too. They are always levying fines against players for violations such as the wrong color cleats, socks that are slightly different, unapproved stripes on their shoes, etc. Stuff that has zero to do with safety and things that the average fan would never even notice. You would think that if they’re going to be that super strict regarding the dress code they might have a rule about hair outside the helmet, but they don’t. Go figure.
What a cool bit of trivia. I now know the only sport that has rules specifically designed to permit hair pulling, other than schoolyard fights involving prepubescent girls of course.
They’re that strict with the dress code because of endorsements, not appearance. If a player wears Nike cleats, for example, then Reebok isn’t getting the full amount of exposure they’ve paid for in their contract with the NFL*, and they’re going to use that during the next negotiation to reduce the total value of that deal. Sponsors pay a lot of money to have their equipment used exclusively, and the last thing they want to see is a competitor’s product in a position that they’ve bought.
It doesn’t cost anybody any money to have somebody’s hair flying out of his helmet. I would assume the NFLPA goes along with the dress code because it affects the league’s bottom line, which in turn affects the salary cap and the players’ paychecks. Long hair doesn’t, and I’d expect the NFLPA to object if the league tried to enforce any rules on it.
*I think the NFL-Reebok deal ended last season, but I don’t know who’s sponsoring what now.
Would be legal, but not a smart choice safety wise in that they’d need a larger helmet to accommodate a large bunch of hair, the bunch of hair would be easily compressible so helmets would fly off easily.
Tucking into the uniform would impact any maneuver requiring twisting the torso or head as most guys wear really snug jerseys.
Football helmet padding is very different from most other protective helmets in that the padding is not one smooth continuous liner, but lots of little “bumper” pads that hair gets tangled in easily which can make just taking the helmet off a wince inducing process at times. Would be pretty painful having the hair tangled into the sliding layers of the shoulder pads down the back side…
Nah, it’s pretty much appearance. Here’s an article describing a pair of fines levied against a couple of 49’ers. $5K to Donte Whitner for wearing black socks, and 10 grand to Michael Crabtree for wearing gold cleats. Neither had anything to do with endorsements.
The socks I can understand, the 49ers don’t use the colour. But the shoes, what is wrong with them? They look good in that game picture, the colour matches the pants perfectly.
The NFL is just real particular about uniforms. They hand out $5K fines every week like they were candy on Halloween. You don’t normally hear about these fines because they don’t come with suspensions, the NFL doesn’t list the specifics of uniform “violations” and the players seem to think the amount of the fines are relatively small when compared to their paychecks. Maybe Donte thought it was worth five grand just to wear black socks that day. Who the Hell knows, but it does happen week to week.
Anyway, I’m not advocating any changes. I’m just agreeing with John DiFool that not having any rules regarding hair is a touch odd, considering they are so particular about something like socks.
It does all come down to merchandising: they want to make sure the players are wearing the stuff the league is endorsing and selling. If the NFL store isn’t selling gold 49ers cleats, they don’t want 49ers wearing those cleats. And the league wants it to be totally clear that they have full control over exactly what everybody can wear to make sure everybody is complying the Wear What We’re Selling concept. Long hair normally doesn’t do anything other than cover the players’ name on his jersey.
Yep. They’re protecting their sponsors, which is to say protecting all the money they get from their sponsors.
[QUOTE=NFL Equipment Policy]
Each player may select among shoe styles previously approved by the League office. All players on the same team must wear shoes with the same dominant color. Approved shoe styles will contain one
team color which must be the same for all players on a given team. A player may wear an unapproved standard football shoe style as long as the player tapes over the entire shoe to conform to his team’s selected dominant color. Logos, names, or other commercial identification on shoes are not permitted to be visible unless advance approval is granted by the League office (see Article 7). Size and location of logos and names on shoes must be approved by the League office. When a shoe logo or a name approved by the League office is covered with an appropriate use of tape (see Article 4(f)), players will be allowed to cut out the tape covering the original logo or name, provided the cut is clean and is the exact size of the logo or name.
[/QUOTE]
Otherwise somebody might say oh man, I gotta get some of those gold Jordans Crabtree was wearing, even though (hypothetically) Jordan wasn’t an approved sponsor, which would piss off Reebok and Under Armour, the actual approved sponsors. Even if you have to cover up the logo, people might see the gold shoe and say damn, who made those gold patent leather things? Which does happen in other sports all the time, so it’s not like the NFL’s concerns are hard to fathom.
Yeah, there’s a reason that the long-haired guys who immediately come to mind are all defensive players - Clay Matthews (linebacker), Troy Polamalu (safety), Domata Peko (lineman). The longest hair you’ll usually see on a ball carrier is small dreadlocks.
