Colorado quarterback Julian Lewis braided his hair after being legally tackled by it in a game against West Virginia.
According to the NCAA, tackling a ballcarrier by their hair is a legal play.
Lewis is a freshman quarterback who is expected to start the final games of the season for the Buffaloes.
Colorado freshman starting quarterback Julian Lewis got yanked down to the turf by his hair in his first career start at West Virginia Nov. 8, leading to questions about grooming decisions and rules about legal football tackles.
Should he cut his long bushy hair if it was going to be liability like this?
Is it even legal to tackle a player by hairpull?
Lewis recently made a strategic response to this by braiding his hair to help keep it out of reach of defenders, according to his coach, Deion Sanders. He is scheduled to make his second career start Nov. 22 at home against Arizona State.
“He’s braided up now, so we won’t have that problem, which I respected,” Colorado coach Deion Sanders said Nov. 19 on his weekly “Coach Prime’s Playbook” show on CBS in Denver. “He understood like, ‘Let me take care of this, because I can’t have this happen.’”
What happened to Julian Lewis to prompt the change?
A West Virginia defender grabbed a fistful of his locks and pulled him down with it, jerking him backward for a sack and a 9-yard loss with 2:00 left in the 29-22 defeat. The TNT game broadcast even showed a small pile or Lewis’ hair still on the field afterward.
After an off weekend last week, Lewis, 18, aims to light a spark for Colorado in Sanders’ third season in Boulder. The Buffaloes are 3-7 this season but are building toward the future by investing in Lewis, who plans to burn his redshirt year this year by starting the final three games of the season, including the loss at West Virginia.
Is tackling by hair legal in college football?
The sack by hair was a legal tackle, which demonstrates the risk taken by ballcarriers who wear their hair long and flowing freely underneath their helmets.
The hair takedown of Lewis was cited in a video tutorial recently by Steve Shaw, the NCAA’s national coordinator of officials in college football.
“Is this a foul?” Shaw asked about the play. “Well, it is clearly not a face-mask foul, as no helmet opening is grabbled. And anatomically, the hair is part of the body, an appendage of the skin. So there’s no foul for grabbing the ballcarrier’s hair and pulling them down.”
It’s different if the player is not carrying the ball but is blocking instead.
“If a player is blocking, he cannot grab an opponent’s hair and hold or pull,” Shaw said on the video. “That would be a foul, but attempting to tackle a ballcarrier, this is not a foul.”
The sack by hair put the Buffaloes in a hole in that game. The Buffs were down 29-19 and had a first down on the West Virginia 27-yard line. But the sack set the Buffs back with 2:00 remaining before they eventually settled for a 38-yard field with 1:16 left.
Follow Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. Email: bschrotenb@usatoday.com