Packers.com Staff Writer Mike Spofford says yes.
I don’t see this as a significant issue that’s changing the game. Sure, modern-day gloves with tacky surfaces might help a receiver haul in a pass or two here or there he otherwise wouldn’t, but is that really something that needs to be legislated out of the game?
Hey, defenders can wear the gloves, too. No one is making this tilted to favor one side over the other. If the gloves help produce a highlight-reel reception or interception, that just adds excitement, if you ask me. I can’t say as I’ve watched highlights of great plays from the old days or recent times that I’ve even paid attention to whether or not the receiver was wearing gloves.
A catch is a catch, right? Maybe that’s a discussion for another day. We certainly don’t need any more rules and regulations on the matter.
Here’s another thing – I love watching football games played in the elements, whether it be rain, snow, cold, you name it. I’m not going to sit here and say the players who have to brave those elements can’t wear gloves on their hands during the games.
I think that would make for a less entertaining brand of football late in the season, frankly. It’s hard enough to catch the ball in 15-degree weather even with gloves. We don’t need to make it even harder. I don’t want a star receiver to have to miss the Super Bowl because the skin on his frost-bitten bare hands split apart trying to make a fourth-quarter catch his team really needed to win a playoff game.
Maybe I’m not a tough guy. I can live with that. But I’m certainly not going to tell guys who are already plenty tougher than I am that they supposedly need to be even tougher. No thanks.
Wear all the gloves you want. I’ll wait for the highlights.
Packers.com Editor Vic Ketchman says no.
Gloves are for keeping hands warm on cold days.
Got cold hands? Do what Bob Hayes did. Stick them in your pants.
Or warm them up at the heaters along the sideline, or tuck them into those slots for the feet on the “Hot Seat,” or blow on them.
Everybody knows gloves aren’t being worn to keep players’ hands warm. They’re being used to aid them in catching the football. That’s why players wear gloves on hot days.
It shouldn’t be allowed. Why? For two reasons: 1.) Hayes was kept out of the Hall of Fame during his lifetime for not having gloves to wear in the “Ice Bowl.” 2.) Lester Hayes wasn’t permitted to coat his hands with the same kind of “stickum” that coats the gloves today’s players wear.
Have you ever put on a pair of those gloves? Hey, I don’t have hands, I have paws, and I could palm a basketball with those gloves on my paws. I’m serious.
They’re so tacky I couldn’t drop a hint wearing those things. No wonder guys are making one-handed catches all over the place. They just throw their arm up in the air and the ball sticks to the glove like lint on flypaper.
Don Hutson didn’t wear gloves. That’s another reason today’s players shouldn’t be permitted to wear gloves. You can’t possibly compare today’s receivers to Hutson and the old guys because Hutson and the old guys didn’t have the advantage today’s receivers do, so throw out the records.
How many one-handed grabs do you think we’d see on a cold day at Lambeau Field if today’s players weren’t allowed to wear gloves? By what percentage would catches, yards receiving and touchdown receptions be reduced if today’s players weren’t permitted to wear gloves? That’s probably why they’re allowed to wear them.
It’s not that Hutson and Hayes weren’t permitted to wear gloves, it’s that the technology didn’t exist back then to put onto the players’ hands something as tacky and pliable as the gloves today’s players wear. So why should our memory of the great receivers of the past be overwhelmed by catches players are making today that they couldn’t have made back then?
Quarterbacks wear them, too. Ben Roethlisberger is the Michael Jackson of NFL quarterbacks. Roethlisberger won a Super Bowl appearing as though he was going to break into a rendition of “Beat It.”
Remember that long metal rod sticking out of Steve DeBerg’s finger? Put a glove on that hand.
Think of Bart Starr wearing gloves. Are you done laughing?
That’s why gloves should be outlawed.
Cast your vote in the poll on the right, please.
