Of course, we can’t … Take the gloves off that is. Like so much of modern life, to do so, to put the genie back in the bottle, is impossible because we can never give back a piece of human comfort or knowledge or technology once we’ve seen it and had it and gotten used to it. So when someone gave us the smartphone that was the end of the in-person conversation, when someone perfects the driverless car we will have even more people asleep at the wheel and now that every football player (except kickers and quarterbacks) wears gloves, we shall never see the naked hand in the NFL again.

It’s that time of year, around Superbowl time, when you to start to see visions of Superbowls past. I was watching highlights from Superbowl VII, 1973 Dolphins versus Redskins and a lot of things about football back then jumped out. One thing you notice is that a lot of the players were wearing one-bar helmets. The kicker for the ‘Skins had a one-bar and no chin strap – he missed a thirty-two-yard field goal kicking straight on. Billy Kilmer had a one-bar helmet and it didn’t look like he had on a chinstrap either. The other thing that jumped out at me was that no running backs or receivers were wearing gloves.

Players today are bigger, stronger and faster, so why do they all have to wear gloves? In the case of the modern receiver, it’s because they can’t catch.

You can make an almost irrefutable argument that, at most NFL positions, the improvements in training and fitness and strength make 2018 NFL players superior athletes compared to the players in Superbowl VII. Like all other players, today’s receivers are bigger and faster and stronger too, than say, Charley Taylor or Paul Warfield, the guys that played in Superbowl VII. But are they better receivers, better catchers of the ball? They are not. Running a 4.13 forty or pressing 250 pounds 700 times has nothing to do with catching a football. Today’s receivers will certainly get to more footballs, but once they get there the catching part is still mostly about God-given hand-eye coordination. And in that aspect, I say the dudes with the one-bar helmets are every bit the equal of today’s receivers.

Still, the average fan when asked to rank the best receivers of all time will, at least according to websites like Ranker, overwhelming name names of the recent past. This is not surprising. These are the receivers people are most familiar with, the ones they have been most exposed to, but aside from exposure bias, most people think today’s receivers are better than yesterday’s for two main reasons: 1) it’s a pass-happy league and pass plays are the NFL’s sexiest, most memorable moments and, 2) today’s receivers are making stupid, one-handed catches at an alarming rate.

And that brings me back to those fuckin’ gloves.

There used to be an NFL wide receiver named Fred Biletnikoff, short, slow little white guy. He used to wrap white athletic tape around both forearms and then plaster the tape with what was then called stick-em (it was like a super-sticky ointment). People called him a cheater, they said the stick-em gave him an unfair advantage.

Every receiver in the NFL has that unfair advantage today and it makes them all seem better than they are. These gloves the receivers wear are custom fitted and they have a nubby, extremely tacky surface. If that surface gets compromised during a game the trainer has nineteen other custom-fitted pairs they can switch into. You too my friend can be an NFL receiver, here put on these gloves and when I throw you the ball, just stick your hand up in the air … the ball will magically stick to it!

Lynn Swann, Steve Largent, Charley Taylor, Tim Brown, Lance Alworth, Charlie Joyner, Raymond Berry and dozens and dozens more – all these guys caught the football with their hands, those things that have skin on them, those things that get chapped. As real catchers of the football, they should be honored.

The next time you see one of those magic circus catches, remember, it’s not the receiver catching the football, it’s the gloves … You could be standing on the sideline with a pair of these gloves in your hands and as the football flew by, you could throw one of the gloves up into the air and the glove would make the catch.

That’s not football, it’s sticky science. What’s next, football cleats infused with Flubber?