Polamalu delivers forearm shiver to NFL

Pittsburgh Steelers safety Troy Polamalu believes football players wear those helmets and shoulder pads for a reason.

It’s to hit people. To hit people hard. To hit people like they did in the olden days when dudes like Dick Butkus, Jack Lambert and Joe Greene smashed the opposition with sadistic glee.

Greene wasn’t called “Nice Joe,” after all. He wasn’t called “Tender Joe.” He was called “Mean Joe” for a reason. He was, well, mean on the football field.

Polamalu longs for those olden days, when the NFL was the National Football League, not the Namby-Pamby Flag Football League.

Polamalu lashed out at the NFL for levying fines against his teammates for seemingly innocuous hits.

“It’s becoming more and more flag football, two-hand touch,” Polamalu told the local Pittsburgh media. “We’ve really lost the essence of what real American football is about. They’re not really concerned about safety, because people have been doing this for … quite a few decades.”

Polamalu is known in the Pittsburgh Steelers locker room as the “Silent Samoan.” He says little, and what he does say usually contains no disparaging words.

So, for him to come out with such harsh criticism makes my ears perk up.

You know, he is correct. For some reason, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell sees himself as a kind of old-west sheriff. He needs to clean up this town, even though the town isn’t really in much need of a cleansing.

Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Hines Ward, arguably the most physical and ferocious blocker at his position of our generation, is more than perplexed about the $15,000 in fines handed out to him this season by the NFL. The league hasn’t been particularly forthcoming with the answers, either,

Since when is blocking a crime worthy of a fine? I was under the impression that blocking in football was a good thing, especially at the wide receiver position. It’s sets the Hines Wards of the sport apart from the Plexico Burresses.

Polamalu is simply coming to the aid of his teammates. He’s also preparing himself for the inevitable day when the NFL fines him for having the audacity to plant his right shoulder between the ocho and the cinco of Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chad Johnson when he goes over the middle.

The funny thing is Polamalu will undoubtedly be fined for complaining about the fines. How about that for some irony?