Why Won't the NCAA Let Us Gaze Upon Beautiful Abs?

It was not so much that we saw Ezekiel Elliott lead the Buckeyes to a national championship—the first real national championship—following the long awaited college football playoff, but how much of him we saw. Elliott played the bulk of the season with his belly exposed, showing sundry and all his midriff. So did other NCAA notables, including UCLA's Myles Jack—all of them showing off torsos stacked like stone work, impossibly perfect displays of masonry, masculinity, and powerful athletic youth. Last season's players were not the first to wear crop tops. The look is rooted in the 1970s and turns up every decade or so; think Eddie George or Lamar Thomas, representative of the last big ab bloom.

Still, the combination of classic football power house, social media, and national championship has caused Elliott's turn with the crop top into a kind of high water mark, and indeed the wave is already receding; the NCAA announced earlier this month a revised penalty for equipment discretions that will pretty much kill the half-shirt. According the NCAA release, the new language is as follows:

"Officials will treat illegal equipment issues—such as jerseys tucked under the shoulder pads or exposed back pads—by making the player leave the field for at least one play. The equipment must be corrected for the player to return to the game. The player may remain in the game if his team takes a timeout to correct the equipment issue." (Emphasis added.)

The original penalty for illegal equipment issues was penalizing a team a timeout; under the new penalty, the players will be kept off the field until said issues are resolved.

"The change is that if a player is discovered to be wearing illegal equipment, instead of his team automatically being charged a timeout, starting this year he must leave the game for at least one down and may not return until the equipment is made legal," NCAA Associate Director of Public and Media Relations Chris Radford wrote via email to VICE Sports' fashion department. The team can call timeout to prevent the player being sent off, but the athlete cannot return until the issue is resolved either way.

Note that the penalty only applies to personal fashion preferences; intent is key. "If a player's equipment becomes illegal through play (shoulder pad uncovered, for example), he is not required to leave the game, but if he is to remain in the game he must make the equipment legal before the next play," Radford wrote.

Ostensibly, of primary concern to the NCAA is not the suppression of peacocking or some prudish aversion to sexy, sexy athletes, but the competitive advantage which could be bestowed on a half shirt devotee by the removal of fabric which potential tacklers/blockers could avail themselves of for a better grip. In this way, the crop top is the ultimate—and inevitable—conclusion of the second skin jersey arms race; anyone who remembers when football players had sleeves or has seen a lineman have to be fitted, like a molting snake in reverse, into his pad/uniform amalgam knows that players put a premium, for obvious reasons, on being hard to grab (and somewhere in Western New York, Rob Ray cracks his knuckles and nods in smoldering agreement).

"That's my understanding, that it does provide a competitive advantage," said UniWatch founder, ESPN columnist, and aesthetic journalist Paul Lukas, reached by phone in Brooklyn. "You know that it's hard to tackle a guy by his abdomen, or his skin, basically, as opposed to his jersey."

This latest rise of midriff-baring has gone on for a few years. Why is the NCAA taking action now? Lukas believes Elliott's success may be to blame.

"I think if the crop top had flown under the radar a bit more, if just a few players were doing it here and there and weren't such particularly high profile players, they might not have cared," Lukas said. "But I think it became something that they couldn't ignore after the national championship game."

Ohio State fans seem to feel the rule is aimed unfairly at their man. After news of the ban made the rounds, a change.org petition was established to keep Elliott's (and, one supposes, other players') linea alba on the field with the other demarcating lines. The petition, started by high school journalism students and Buckeyes News founders Max Fritzhand and David Wertheim, has, at the time of this writing, 8,324 signatures, a retweet of endorsement from Elliott himself—his only official contribution/contact—and a plucky, quixotic quality that makes it easy for anyone who wishes to tilt at that giant ugly windmill spinning away in Indianapolis to enjoy.

The students feel, as Lukas does, that Elliott's success brought the hammer down; the look has become something of a visual rallying point for Ohio State fans, sort of like always wearing white has become one for LSU. "It has become a staple for Elliott and Ohio State fans nationwide, and honestly, who's it hurting?" Wertheim wrote via email.

Wertheim believes the majority of his signees are, as one would expect, students and die hards. "From what I've seen, it's a lot of both," he wrote. "Many students, fans, and random high school athletes who wear the crop top in games" who fear a similar ban for themselves. (Hear that, Indy? Some poor kid is going to have a harder time impressing their crush if this catches on; you aren't supposed to be hand tackling anyway! Square up, head up, shoulder in the numbers!)

As to the charges that Elliott et. al. may be gaining an advantage on the field, Fritzhand has an elegant solution.

"If anyone can wear it," he wrote in an email, "I don't see it as a huge issue."

Imagine! Every player on the field, spare tires and steel belting on display for all to see…

Well, that would be uniform, wouldn't it?