Hair pulling in the NFL is legal, which might not be a good thing for all the NFL players who have hair long enough to be pulled. And there are quite a few of them.
I didn't know it was okay to pull hair in the NFL until recently, but then, I hadn't given it any thought at all until it happened in a game I was watching. In November 2010, the Dallas Cowboys played the Detroit Lions, and Ndamukong Suh pulled Marion Barber to the turf by the hair. Suh got a horse collar penalty for that tug, and as the booth announcers talked about the penalty, and how it was a bad call, it got me thinking about the long hair on some players in the NFL. And hair pulling.
What I really got to thinking about was why there weren't more instances of hair pulling, since there are a lot of NFL players with long hair flowing out from under their helmets. Troy Polamalu is probably the player most well known for having long hair, but there's also Chris Johnson, Rey Maualuga, and Marshawn Lynch to name just a few others.
How much hair pulling is there in the NFL?
Since pulling hair is an acceptable method of stopping, slowing, or bringing an opponent to the ground, you'd think you'd hear about it more often.
Maybe it does happen more often than I hear about, because the teams I watch a lot of don't have a lot of long-haired players. The Cowboys have Marion Barber and Jesse Holley, the Packers have Clay Matthews.
Maybe if I watched more games and more teams, I'd see whether Troy Palomalu or Chris Johnson's long hair make a tempting target, and the whole hair pulling thing wouldn't be such a novelty for me.
Or maybe it just doesn't happen that often. Maybe getting your hands on an opponent's hair isn't as easy it seems from my sofa in front of the television. Maybe if you're able to get close enough to your target to pull his hair, you don't need to pull his hair to do your job.
Whose hair gets pulled more often—offense or defense?
I don't know if there are any statistics on which NFL players with long hair get their hair pulled more often, but my guess would be that it happens more often to the guys with the ball.
I can see how using the hair could be an effective tool: even a quick tug could derail a run, or slow someone down. Even tough NFL players with long hair would have to agree that getting your hair pulled hurts.
The League's position on pulling hair in the NFL is that long hair that sticks out from under the helmet is part of the uniform; if a player chooses to have long hair, he's provided his opponent a tool to use against him, and can't complain when he does.
Of course, it's only legal to pull hair in the NFL if the hair pulling takes place during a play. Pulling an opponent's hair after the play is over is illegal, as Richard Seymour of the Raiders found out.
Now that I know it's legal to pull hair in the NFL, I'm going to be looking for it during games. I'll identify the players with hair long enough to get pulled and watch to see if it happens. A little tug here, a yank there. This could be the next best thing to the elementary school playground, where hair pulling abounds.
