Let’s Get the Strippers Out of Football Games

So Cleveland’s Earnest Byner lost the tying touchdown on a fumble. Not true. He lost the ball on football’s newest cheap trick--the stripped ball. That’s not football, folks, that’s purse-snatching.

Whatever happened to the guy who would make a clean tackle on a ballcarrier to save the day? Is he gone, and is the game going to degenerate into the team making the most snatches coming out the winner? Will we witness the birth of a new cadre of coaches specializing in the art of ball-stripping? Will the league institute a special team of ball-strippers?

And will the capper be the awarding of the Heisman Trophy to the player with the most strips?

The days of the legitimate strippers, complete with fans, runways and Irish tenors, departed years ago. Now let’s get football out of stripping and back to what it used to do--tackle the man with the ball.

Bill Mondschein

Oceanside