What a Difference A Chin Strap Can Make

By Jenna Marson
February 25, 2009

While I was watching the Super Bowl I started thinking about what the NFL, or even NCAA football, would do without chin straps. I'm not talking about their physical, securing property. As its original purpose, that is obviously an important function.

I would argue that they prevent injury in an equally effective, yet much less acknowledged way. I sincerely believe that significantly more potentially injury-inducing altercations would occur while the clock is stopped without chin straps.

Consider, for a second, how many more malicious shoulder brushes, cheap punches and throw-down brawls there would be if not for that tiny strip of plastic. It has magical, alleviating properties. That one secondary piece of equipment has the power to restrain enraged 300-pound, adrenaline-overloaded men. It diffuses anger in a way that cursing, clapping, throwing a towel, and angrily tearing the water bottle away from the team gopher can't. There's something in the dismissive motion and the satisfying snap as the strap comes undone. It also lets everyone know that you're pissed off without risking a penalty.

Have you ever watched a nationally televised football game in which not one chin strap was irately unsnapped? I haven't. It makes me wonder if life wouldn't be more peaceful if everyone had a chin strap on at all times that they could rip off in moments of outrage. All over the world people could be heatedly unhooking them instead of sending incensed emails to their bosses, laying on their car horns, or insulting the obnoxious drunkards three bar stools down. I know people often suggest counting to 10 as an anger assuager but why subject yourself to grating submission when you could hear that cathartic click?

I think of myself as a relatively patient person but there are people in my life for whom a chin strap would be very beneficial. I like to think of myself as distantly removed from football players. I spend a large percentage of my time reading, doing schoolwork and engaging in intellectually-stimulating conversations with friends while I imagine NFL players to divide their time equally by eating, sleeping, lifting weights and consuming illegal performance-enhancing drugs.

When, at the end of a play, however, a player pulls his chin strap off in anger I can relate. I've been there. I've had practical jokes played on me, been teased mercilessly, and lived with two younger brothers for the majority of my life. I know that feeling of intolerable rage, the feeling that if you don't take action you will surely suffocate. With my brothers it usually manifested itself in an overwhelming desire to strangle them Homer Simpson-style.

I never understood and probably will never understand the appeal of repeatedly doing something someone dislikes until he or she is incapable of enduring it any longer. Yet that seems to be younger brothers' most adept skill. They're acutely attuned to anything that annoys, angers or upsets people. So, as disinclined as I am to admit it, I know how professional football players feel.

When the referee missed the opposing team's corner holding your jersey or when the receiver you were covering was clearly out of bounds when he made the catch, I get it. I feel your pain. Unhook that chin strap. It's extremely unlikely that it'll change the call on the field but it'll make you feel just a little bit vindicated.