Red mist from a yellow flag

No matter how many American football games you've watched, the question has probably never occurred to you before: Those brightly-coloured yellow handkerchiefs the officials toss around to signal penalties? What prevents them from, you know, being picked up by a gust of wind and blowing clear across the stadium into, say, Lake Erie?

Until last Sunday afternoon Orlando Brown probably hadn't given much thought to this imponderable aerodynamic riddle, either. Brown, a 6 ft 7 in, 350lb offensive tackle for the Cleveland Browns, learned the hard way that the zebras' penalty flags fly as far as they do because they are weighted with buckshot.

Early in the second period of Cleveland's 24-14 loss to Jacksonville on Sunday afternoon, match referee Jerry Triplette spotted a false start on the Cleveland line and fired his weighted handkerchief in Brown's direction. His aim was true.

Struck in the right eye by the penalty flag, Brown staggered off the field in obvious pain. The eye swelled shut almost immediately, but as he returned to take his place in the huddle, the player's vision was not so impaired that he did not spot Triplette taking a few hesitant steps in his direction.

At that point the enraged Brown, who for reasons entirely devoid of irony answers to the nickname "Zeus," flung the referee to the ground, and might have done even graver damage had he not been restrained by team-mates. Immediately ejected from the contest, Brown was taken to The Cleveland Clinic, where he remains hospitalised. Fears that he may lose his eyesight have been exacerbated by the disclosure that his father, Claude Brown, went blind from glaucoma in 1993, and that the condition is hereditary.

None of which should excuse his attack on the referee. In his day job, Triplette is employed as a treasurer for an energy corporation. He had immediately apologised to Brown after the incident. No one has claimed that he intentionally threw his flag at the player, but the fact remains that some football officials seem to regard the handkerchief toss as some class of Olympic field event in which they might be judged both on distance and style points.

Moreover, it might be noted that between knee pads, thigh pads, rib pads, shoulder pads, helmet, and face mask, a player's eyes are just about the only part of his body that is not protected from flying objects. Some NFL players wear optional plexiglass visors attached to their helmets.

Granted, those who wear these shields generally do so to discourage opponents from gouging them in the eye during pile-ups and not as protection from scatter-armed officials. One is still forced to wonder why Orlando Brown, given a family history that made him more vulnerable than most to eye injury, did not.

The episode now seems to have taken on a life of its own. On one hand, the hardliners are demanding that the NFL send a message by suspending Zeus for the entire 2000 season. (That Brown will miss Sunday's season finale against the Colts appears a foregone conclusion).

Others, particularly Brown's team-mates, suggest that the entire incident was provoked by a trigger-happy official and that the potential loss of an eye ought to be punishment enough.

The debate seems to have blurred all perspective, even to the point that the NFL head office, normally decisive in matters of this sort, has been eerily silent. The minimum punishment for physical contact with an official is supposed to be a $10,000 fine - loose change to a player like Brown, whose contract calls for him to be paid $27 million over six years.

Four times in the past, players have been suspended for one game for `zebra' abuse. Three seasons ago, Raiders' guard Steve Wisniewski was also fined $20,000 for the same infraction - the most severe punishment meted out to date.

Listen to Cleveland fans and players and you'd find yourself believing that the NFL employs a pack of vigilantes in striped shirts who amuse themselves by taking target practice on Browns players.

Listen to the law and order faction and you'd think Orlando Brown was the next logical step in a league in which the Carolina Panthers did not officially waive Rae Carruth until he was officially charged with first-degree murder last week - fully six weeks after he was implicated in the drive-by shooting of the mother of his unborn child.

Nor should Brown's family ophthalmological history be a mitigating factor in whatever decision commissioner Paul Tagliabue ultimately hands down - if and when he makes a decision at all.

At the same time, is it outrageous to suggest that the league adopt a policy ordering their officials to direct penalty flags away from miscreants, rather than toward them? Or that, perhaps, the first order of business going into the next millennium might be to use something less dangerous and outmoded to weight down the zebras' handkerchiefs?

I mean, nobody has even remotely suggested that the referee intentionally threw the flag at Brown. But after watching the episode on videotape it is apparent that neither did he try very hard not to hit him.

A statement released from the hospital on Tuesday sounded suspiciously more like the work of Brown's PR department than Zeus himself:

"My actions were based upon an incredible amount of pain which affected my judgement," it read in part. "This situation was very scary due to my father's blindness and having to deal with that for many years.

"My injury and those facts still do not justify pushing an official. I regret what has happened a great deal. Nothing like this will ever happen again."

Brown, of course, should be punished. He has already been fined $5,000 once this season, for jumping on a Saints' player and punching him in the back on the final play of an October 31st Cleveland win.

But when it was suggested that Zeus might benefit from anger counselling, team-mate Derrick Alexander pointed out, "if that is the case, then all of us need help, because on Sundays we're all out there trying to kill each other."