The NFL is not a league to put anything on hold for any reason, even a global pandemic, and so the NFL Draft will occur on April 23, only with everyone at home and dialing in virtually. To that end, the league released its dress code for players who are hoping to be drafted.
While they won’t have to wear suits, as they would at the in-person draft, the league has a 15-rule code that prospects will have to follow, per a report by NBC Sports’s Mike Florio.
Some of the prohibitions seem pretty logical — “Libel or hate speech” and “Racial, religious, or ethnic slurs” seem pretty self-explanatory — but others are more arbitrary. For example, who is to be the judge ruling on whether a player’s shirt includes “References to movies, video games, and other media that contains or promotes objectionable material or subject matter,” given that objectionable material is a matter of opinion?
There are also rules that are seemingly there just to placate sponsors — the code prohibits “Third-party logos other than those of NFL Official Licensed Partners; Nike, Adidas, UnderArmour, and New Era,” for example. Of course, players can just decline to participate in the virtual draft if they do not like any of the rules, just as they could on a normal year.
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