The NFL is living up to its No Fun League moniker once again as it considers forbidding players from letting long hair hang below their names on the back of their jerseys.

I guess this proposal, which I’ll dub the Troy Polamalu rule, is supposed to address potential personal fouls and violence by long-haired players getting their hair pulled during or after tackles. But it’s legal to pull someone down by his hair. The example that’s been thrown around about Larry Johnson getting hit with a personal foul for pulling Polamalu’s hair was after the play was over, which is unsportsmanlike conduct akin to pulling someone’s face mask after the whistle.

The NFL has bigger issues than hair, like teams videotaping each other’s practice and stars getting jailed. If a player wants to wear his hair long, let him accept the risks of being tackled by it. It seems this is another example of the league wanting to remove even more individual style from its employees. The NFL needs to lighten up.