Rich McKay, Falcons President, Comments on Potential NFL Regulations for Gloves

Atlanta Falcons president Rich McKay, who is also the chairman of the NFL's competition committee, believes it's worth examining the impact of the league's unregulated use of gloves. 

"I think it's time to go back and look at the gloves and see if, with what's going on here with sports science in the past 10 years, if there isn't too much of an advantage being gained," said McKay to the Los Angeles Times' Sam Farmer in an extensive feature on the topic.

The proliferation of points brought on by rules changes to favor high-volume passing teams have also given way to highlight-reel catches. Farmer mentions the one New York Giants star Odell Beckham Jr. made last year that set the Internet ablaze as a prime example.

ProFootballTalk.com's Mike Florio is among those who believe the NFL should have taken action on this issue long ago:

In 1981, the league banned Stickum, a substance that preceded gloves and aided pass-catchers. Jerry Rice, whom many consider the best receiver of all time, stirred controversy in admitting to Stickum use in an interview earlier this year. Rice began playing for the San Francisco 49ers in 1985.

NBC analyst and former NFL wide receiver Cris Collinsworth also weighed in on the matter of gloves in Farmer's piece. Collinsworth hinted that although some catches seem impossible without the use of gloves, the bottom-line objective is to thrill football fans.

"Every Sunday we say, 'Oh, my goodness! Look at that!'" said Collinsworth. "That's a good thing. It's an entertainment business. Why not make it as entertaining as possible?"

Slapping regulations on glove use seems like a tricky undertaking. The Deflategate scandal that's surrounded the New England Patriots had to do with ball pressure levels for quarterbacks. Inflation levels can be measured using pounds per square inch.

All signal-callers have slightly different preferences as to how worked in they want their balls, but at least there's a quantitative measurement to determine whether rules are being violated.

The stickiness of gloves seems like a much more arbitrary metric to track.

McKay is wise to at least delve into the matter as the head of the competition committee. A scientific solution may be too complicated to work out, though. One way to level the playing field is to outlaw gloves, but significant backlash could ensue from players and in the form of more dropped passes that diminish the quality of the NFL's on-field product.