The Single-Bar Facemask

By Adam Ruggiero
Love of Sports Correspondent

Americans aren’t strangers to passing fads – fedoras and chivalry, box socials and soda jerks, bell bottoms and muscle cars, cassette tapes and phones that went “ring.”

However, none of these compares to the recent demise of an epic sports symbol.

I’m speaking of course of the Patriots’ release of punter Scott Player, and with him, the very last single-bar facemask you’ll ever see on a professional football field.

A moment, please …

Yes, like Gary Anderson, Matt Bahr, Fuad Reveiz and some guy named Uwe von Schaman before him, Scott Player donned the “Helmetus non Intimidatus” every time he stormed onto the turf.

Fans of the Arizona Cardinals, and perhaps a few diehard Browns fans, may remember Player more for his blonde fu manchu lip brow – which actually possessed its own black belt in karate and earned two Purple Hearts – but most of us pay homage to the hit-me-if-you-can, painted bike helmet he wore.

As the tale is commonly told, and widely accepted as truth, the stylish lip protecting one-bar came to be after former Brown quarterback Otto Graham was elbowed in the mouth in a 1953 game during the first half. At halftime, his coach, Paul Brown, MacGyvered together the first facemask with a single bar.

Thus came unto football the one-bar facemask.

The beauty of the single-bar was that it clearly provided no protection to kickers’ already imp-like faces. No doubt, 300-pound lineman and 4.50/40 linebackers charged like bulls seeing red when some namby-pamby kicker pranced onto the field in a Wal-Mart replica helmet with a door-knocker hanging around his chin. And how agonizing it must’ve been when that useless helmet kicked a 30-yarder with time expiring to send them home in shame. Truly, the one-bar was a weapon only to be wielded by the most virtuous souls.

Of course, there was a downside to this football fashion statement. If ever you failed to live up to the great responsibility that helmet demanded, you had nothing behind to hide your disgraced mug. Scott Norwood learned that in Super Bowl XXV when his infamous “wide right” field goal forever tainted his name. No Bills fan will ever forget the look of utter shame on Norwood’s face as the Giants jumped victoriously around the defeated Bills as the clock ticked to zero.

Now, though, is not a time to dwell on the negative. Nay; it is instead a time to remember those glorious, ah-hem, “athletes” who sported the mighty one-bar despite vast gains in both helmet technology and opponent’s overall pain-inflicting potential.

Player and Anderson had both endured NFL rule changes over the last 10 years barring their amusing choice of head gear (no pun intended) by virtue of a grandfather clause allowing those with the bar to remove it and screw it back into newer helmets.

Now that the Patriots have cut Player, and Anderson is actually retired, we can toast the passing of a true NFL icon – The Single-Bar Facemask. This Old School Love is for you.