The Associated Press reports that the NFL’s owners will address next week at the annual meetings a rule requiring players to wear their hair in a manner that doesn’t obscure the name plate on the backs of their jerseys.

The primary potential impediment to such a rule, as we pointed out the other day, is that the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the NFL and the union expressly prohibits the imposition of discipline based on facial hair or hair length.

The potential loophole as to the proposal is that the rule doesn’t require players to get their hair cut, but to “tuck it up inside their helmets,” said Falcons president Rich McKay (who somehow has maintained his place on the Competition Committee even though he no longer is part of the Falcons’ football operations).

The rule has been proposed by the Kansas City Chiefs, for no apparent reason.

We’re not sure that the “hair net” exception will overcome the CBA, which states that “no player will be disciplined because of hair length.”  If the owners pass a rule requiring players to tuck their hair under their helmets and Steelers safety Troy Polamalu refuses to do so and is disciplined for it, isn’t he being disciplined “because of hair length”?

It could be that the Chiefs are generally miffed at the union’s saber-rattling of late regarding the CBA, and that the Chiefs are hoping to provoke a fight over something trivial, solely in the interests of fighting about something.  If 23 other teams agree with the Chiefs, the NFL and the union might be on a collision course for a brouhaha over a relatively meaningless issue.

And, if push comes to pull on this one, we think that the union has the league by the short ones.