AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo.—Air Force sophomore quarterback Tim Jefferson decided against wearing a visor on his facemask last season because he was “the new guy.”
“I didn’t want to jump up trying to make a fashion statement or anything,” he said. “So I was like, ‘I’ll lay off for a year.'”
This season, Jefferson is wearing a visor. And while it counts as a fashion statement—the rough equivalent of a headband in basketball or stirrups pulled high in baseball—Jefferson said it is for protection. During his junior season in high school, he suffered a scratched cornea in a game.
“So that’s why I started wearing one,” he said.
He’s not alone. About a dozen Air Force players have visors attached to their facemasks—many of them for reasons similar to Jefferson’s.
Junior outside linebacker Andre Morris Jr. has one because he wears contacts and “there’s no telling where a hand might go.” And sophomore cornerback Anthony Wright Jr. has worn one since early last season after being poked in the eye inadvertently by a receiver.
While Wright uses the visor “for protection,” he admits it was “a fashion thing” when he wore one in high school.
“Being in high school, you just want to imitate the cats you see on TV,” he said.
After all, they do look pretty cool.
“I’ve always wanted one,” said sophomore receiver Jonathan Warzeka, who admitted his visor is little more than a fashionable accouterment. “I remember back in the day when (the University of Miami) had the reflected, tinted orange visors, I said, ‘Aah, I need to get me one of those.’ And then my dad pretty much said, ‘Hey, when you get that (Division I) scholarship and you’re playing, you can do whatever you want.'”
Those orange visors to which Warzeka referred—along with the tinted Darth Vader visors and the mirrored ones such as former Falcons linebacker Chris Gizzi wore—no longer are legal in college. In 2007, with requests for tinted eye shields increasing rapidly, the NCAA Football Rules Committee voted to prohibit them during games.
Air Force coach Troy Calhoun said he wouldn’t allow tinted shields even if the NCAA did.
“I think there’s a little bit of a medical concern I have,” Calhoun said. “I think there are times where you need to see their eyeballs, medically.
“And then the other part, just from a coaching standpoint, I think you need to know when they’re looking at you, and you need to be able to look at your players, too.”
Dan Siermine, Air Force’s equipment manager, said the visors protect players from “what goes on on the bottom of the pile,” and he said he’s never seen one break. However, he said, they get dirty—a reason why defensive tackle Ben Garland did not like wearing one—and they can fog up. And if it rains, they don’t have windshield wipers.
“They fog up,” Siermine said, “we take them off.”
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