In this article, it seems that Denver Bronco quarterback Jake Plummer “faced heavy fines” for wearing a small sticker with the #40 on the back of his helmet (picture on link) to honor Pat Tillman, his teammate in college and in the pros, who joined the Army and was killed in Afghanistan.
No commentary about the war or any of that - this is a guy honoring his friend. Why is the NFL all freaked out by it?
The NFL has a rule that uniforms must be…uniform. They feel that if people are allowed to do their own unique thing, the look of the NFL teams will be less professional. There are all kinds of crazy rules and players are fined for not having their shirt tucked in or wearing the wrong socks.
This isn’t about Plummer and Tilman. This is about making no exceptions to the rule.
The irony is that everything that I’ve read about Tilman indicates that someone wearing a sticker on their helmet in his honor is that last thing that he would want.
Haj
There’s also the slippery slope of players sneaking their own endorsements onto their uniform. These would interfere with the NFL’s “official sponsors”.
The NFL office is just hypocritically insane. It is perfectly all right to have a Super Bowl halftime show that was shamelessly tawdry even before Janet’s breast-baring, but God-forbid that any player have so much as a team uniform sock out of place.