The National Football League can tell you what color your cleats should be, how your jersey should look and what helmet facemask is allowed and which is not. Now it appears the NFL is going to take control over the gloves players wear. Somehow, the gloves have gone overlooked by the NFL long enough, and that is about to change.
“There are no standards right now,” NFL executive V.P. of football operations Troy Vincent said recently, according to Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio. “We have been working with our partners — Under Armour, Nike — to see how we could adjust and have some minimum standards.”
The biggest concern appears to be gloves that are a bit too effective. That sounds silly, right? Consider the NFL has adjusted rules time and time again to help the offense over the years and taken away some of the control defenders can have on a play. Do receivers really need another advantage? That is where the gloves come into play.
“The challenge is the tackiness, and the gloves now are so tacky that it’s taking away from the true skill level,” Vincent explained. “So we have been working with our manufactures and partners, Virginia Tech, in trying to create a standard in all protective equipment and in particular the gloves. So that frankly is a work in progress because there is no standards in the industry and it appears that we have to create one.”
It’s true the technology with gloves has come a long way, which has had a hand in helping make plays like this a reality…
So will the NFL actually be robbing fans of watching spectacular plays in the future, or merely make the probability of a SportsCenter highlight play far more credible? Either way, the impact of standardizing the gloves in the NFL remains to be seen. Defenses figure to benefit from any formal outlines for gloves being introduced and adopted, but by how much?
