NFL always happy with meek tweaks

The National Football League has just wrapped up its annual Tweak Week, during which it convenes executives from all 32 clubs to tweak a few rules, consider new policies that are subject to further tweaking and emerge in the same traditional profile it has had lo these many years.

Take for example hair length, a traditional non-issue that's somehow and quite literally grown into one.

Presumably alarmed over the spike in the number of players whose hair has overtaken their shoulder pads, the Kansas City Chiefs suggested it ought to be against the rules for a player's hair to obscure the name on the back of his jersey.

You'll note that having lost 12 of their 16 games last fall, the Chiefs might have more urgent concerns, but give them credit for thoroughness by positing that the league just might have become too hairy for their particular karmic energies.

Or something.

Commissioner Roger Goodell said he'd like to proceed cautiously on the matter of matted hair, which I imagine to mean cautiously enough for some corporate visionary to seize this moment to deliver the official hair-care product of the NFL (and the untold millions such a fine product would exchange for such an endorsement). The hair issue was tabled for the near term, although Thursday Steelers safety Troy Polamalu reportedly put his barber on speed dial.

Yeah, like he has a barber.

I'm betting Troy still has his customarily generous locks when Pittsburgh opens Sept. 7, just as most every element of the NFL game will look much the same as it did last year. Tweak Week rarely results in any major convulsions. No one ever walks into a meeting room in Palm Beach and says, "Two thoughts, no more first and 10; it's first and nine, or no first downs at all. Wherever you take possession, you have five plays to put it in the end zone. Show of hands on Thought 1?"

Instead we get stuff like this: Replay now can be used on field goals, but only to determine whether the ball went over or under the crossbar, and inside or outside an upright, not over an upright.

Honest to God.

Let me re-word that for practical purposes: Replay now can be used on field goals, but not in the one instance for which replay might be useful.

The better solution on field-goal judging is to have the uprights extend beyond the current 30 feet above the crossbar to 300 feet above the crossbar, thus eliminating domed stadiums. Perhaps this is why I don't get sent to the meetings.

There were, to be fair, two relatively tangible changes in the NFL rules this week, one eliminating the so-called force out, in which an airborne receiver who otherwise would have gotten both feet in bounds is belted across the sideline. From now on, that's legal defense. Presumably, this would allow an ultra-strong linebacker to catch a receiver in mid-air, carry him to the sideline and throw him into the Gatorade. Granted, this would invite a flag for unnecessary roughness. (By the way, in its Digest of Rules, the league provides penalties for unnecessary roughness and something called "malicious" unnecessary roughness, which I'd like to see defined. I wonder if it involves a shovel.)

The other notable change is that a defensive player now may receive sideline communication through his helmet, just as quarterbacks have for the past 15 years. In a special addendum to this rule, teams playing the New England Patriots, in addition to wireless communication with the defense, will be required to flash traditional hand signals as well, just so the Patriots have something to videotape.

Perhaps I should mention that teams who win the coin toss now can defer their choice until the second half, as in college football, but frankly I can't think of a way that would affect a single particle of anyone's existence. It's just another indicator that people want choices in this consumer culture, a trend that's finally found the coin toss. Previously a simple procedure, now you've got heads, tails, kick, receive, defer, no salt and non-drowsy.

The two things I'd like to see implemented never even get discussed, namely that any player who removes his helmet on the field has to play the rest of the game without one, and that the NFL stop issuing delayed apologies when it determines that an official made the wrong call, impacting the result of a game.

Unless something comes with the apology, a sincere note on a card with hearts around the border -- sorry for your loss -- or a lovely bouquet in perhaps a converted helmet vase, the league really should just keep it.

The official apology the Steelers got from the league this week for missing a holding call and thus sustaining Jacksonville's winning field goal drive in January's playoff game reminded me of the condolence card Earl Sinclair got for his wife after an especially egregious error on the old animated sitcom, "Dinosaurs."

The card read,

"What can I say, I've ruined your day

and made you all angry and surly

How could I make such a thoughtless mistake

and bury your mother too early?''

(Contact Gene Collier can be reached at gcollier@post-gazette.com.)

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