The Sunshine Empire

With all the political talk and the campaign raging, I actually have a sports bone to pick with the National Football League. Reports are surfacing that the NFL is considering banning the long hair worn outside of helmets and over players’ names on jerseys for the coming season. This is absurd whitewashing of real fundamental problems arising in the league. First, it strikes me as vaguely racist as the issue has only come with the popularity of players like Troy Polamalu, Al Harris, and my personal favorite Rashean Mathis. Jeremy Shockey’s and Kevin Greene’s long ratty blond hair were never an issue. But dreadlocks and Polamalu’s Samoan waves seem to offend the sensibilities of the old men in the owner’s boxes. Now the NFL and the member franchises are businesses that are free to set their own rules, but the sudden need to address this after years is just curious.

While the owners worry about the hairstyles of players, the growing possibility that a lockout, and uncapped year in 2011 seems not to be a priority. Roger Goodell should be very careful if he thinks he can pull off the garbage that Gary Bettman attempted while destroying the NHL with a labor war. The fact is the NFL has become the most profitable and popular sport in the United States with true financial revenue sharing, and the system is sliding out of whack. Cutting dreadlocks will not correct this glaring problem.