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Bill Williamson, formerly of the Denver Post and newly-hired by ESPN.com, reports that the proposal to keep long hair off the backs of player jerseys likely will be “tabled” — which is fancy talk for “ignored without a vote.”
Falcons president Rich McKay said that the league needs to gather more information before acting on the rule, and could poll players to gauge their feelings on the matter.
In our view, the strategy is a way for the league to avoid a thorny issue (especially in light of Article VII, Section 2 of the CBA) while still saving face.
McKay also pointed out that the proposal was made by the Kansas City Chiefs, and not by the Competition Committee. (Translation: “Don’t blame us for it.”)
Meanwhile, a reader had this to say in response to the comments of Chiefs coach Herm Edwards, who recently compared the NFL uniform to the fact that his father wore an ”Army suit“: “Can someone please let Herm Edwards know that I don’t know his father, but as a 21.5-year active duty Air Force member, I’m pretty sure his dad didn’t put on an ‘Army Suit.’ I’m pretty confident it was a uniform, and his service much like mine was intended to preserve one of many freedoms, including one’s personal grooming choices.”
March 31st, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Preserve personal grooming choices? How many guys in the Air Force have hair as long as Troy Polamalu’s? What about beards of any length? None? Why not? The obvious answer is “it’s not allowed”. Most places of employment have grooming rules.
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March 31st, 2008 at 10:45 pm
“Can someone please let Herm Edwards know that I don’t know his father, but as a 21.5-year active duty Air Force member, I’m pretty sure his dad didn’t put on an ‘Army Suit.’ I’m pretty confident it was a uniform, and his service much like mine was intended to preserve one of many freedoms, including one’s personal grooming choices.”
piss yeah.
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March 31st, 2008 at 10:52 pm
Leave it to a steeler fan to say “piss yeah”. It was spit in your burger, not piss man.
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March 31st, 2008 at 11:23 pm
Quite simply, the league is realizing that they can’t dictate how a person looks. Why is long hair in the work place [wrongly] considered as something not appropriate? Why would a person with long hair ever be considered less than professional than somebody that keeps their hair shorter? It doesn’t make any sense, and these cultural rules really can’t be enforced legally. If so, I vote we fire all the fat people. Just like short hair, it takes action to keep up.
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April 1st, 2008 at 1:39 am
mcdonalds may have grooming rules, and other places that handle so-called food. most other types of places do not.
oh, and ive spent 12 years of my life in the military, the grooming standards there have entirely different purpose. some of which IS in fact safety related depending on where and what you do. And the rest of it, is something you cant understand unless youve been there.
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April 1st, 2008 at 8:17 am
Everybody STILL seems to be missing the point. The proposal was never to mandate the cutting of hair. It was to “keep the hair from obscuring the name on the jersey.” The player could do that however they chose and it is common-place for an employer to have personal appearance rules while an employee is on the job. Football players should be no different from anyone else.
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April 1st, 2008 at 10:00 am
Exactly, AllSeeingEye. If they want to have the hair all the way down the back, fine- but it is a uniform issue. They can use a hair net, or tie it up so that it doesn’t hang over the name on the back of the jersey. It is not that difficult.
The reason you see all the negative comments about it is that this is currently a fashion fad, mostly by people who are all about #1, the guy in the mirror. If they can’t live with a simple rule for the massive salary, quit.
My modest proposal, repeated from below, is that the league explicitly make both tackling by hair, and offensive holding of hair, legal. That will end the fad, and the narcissists can go back to stuffing felt-tip pens in their socks to preen on TV.
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April 1st, 2008 at 10:06 am
It’s not a cultural issue. In fact in most cases in the NFL, I doubt that it’s even a hair issue. It’s a hair extension issue. Ya right, like Al Harris’ real hair is 3 feet long, which is about how long it would have to be to be braided as long as it is. And they *are* braided extensions. Not dreadlocks.
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April 1st, 2008 at 11:31 am
It’s like a distinct way to identify a player. I like it, and don’t think it should be changed. However, when Larry Johnson ripped Polamalu’s head off tackling him (two season’s ago?) that’s polamalu’s fault. If you have long hair you have to accept the fact it may get pulled. Even though Johnson deliberately reached for his hair.
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April 1st, 2008 at 11:23 pm
At bottom, this must be an instance of the NFL attempting to exercise more control. Is it part of a larger struggle between the NFLPA and owners? We shan’t know. But we can be sure that since the names on the jerseys are unneccessary at best, this has little to do with their being obscured by long hair or achieving easier player identification, or, worse, for the benefit of the fans.
Each player is assigned a number, by which he is indentified. We all know the numbers of the players on our team’s roster and many of those for players on other teams. In fact, some of us remember phone numbers by associating players with one or two of the digits: John Elway-Emmitt Smith, would be 722-xxx-xxxx. Furthermore, there are plenty of college football teams and MLB teams whose uniforms have had for decades only numbers, and there is no trouble identifying those athletes. And this is the same reason that it was ridiculous to allow a player to put more than a first initial and last name on his uniform — even if every player’s last name were Williams, because each player is assigned a different NUMBER, there would no logical need to differentiate among the fifty-three Williamseseses on the squad by allowing Tank, and John, and Rex, Scott, and Reggie, and Billy D., etc. to include his first name, too. Besides, it looked very silly. As for the long hair, if anything, it makes a player MORE IDENTIFIABLE: you know Polamalu and Harris and Barber III when you see him. Redbull’s right on the money.
I won’t go as far as saying it’s culturally or racially based, but it’s certainly got more to do with a struggle for authority, power, and control between the NFLPA and NFL, than with the names on the jerseys.
*Vox Veritas, if your name is meant to mean “voice of truth” it should be “Vox Veritatis”…as it stands now, it’s “voice truth” or “truth voice”, but truth here is not an adjective, so it’s like saying “leg face”…no offense, like the Dolphins. Many thanks to those few who have served all of us.
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April 2nd, 2008 at 8:30 am
I don’t think the issue has anything to do with player identification. I think the league couldn’t care less about that. It is a uniformity issue IMO. Like having all the shoes and socks the same color for the team, having all the jerseys tucked it, and having all the socks pulled all the way up. The NFL thinks it improves the overall image and gives the team overall a more neat appearance to have all the uniforms look as similar as possible. The hair hanging out disrupts that, even more than the players’ socks for instance. I think that’s all it is.
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