Sports

NFL players are being fined for wearing Kanye West’s Yeezy cleats

by Tyler Munro

Kanye West’s Yeezys are a hot ticket for sneaker heads, and they’ve expanded into actual athletic wear: Over the weekend, He worked with Adidas to debut the Yeezy 350 Cleat.

To advertise the shoes, there’s no better option than actual athletes, which is why West (or, more likely, Adidas) sent pairs of the flashy shoes to a few NFL superstars: Houston’s DeAndre Hopkins, Minnesota’s Adrian Peterson, and Denver’s Von Miller.

Unfortunately, the NFL has a real hard-on for its players having fun with their foot wear and now, a few days after the fact and one game into Week 2, they’ve started issuing fines. As always, the league has proven to have its priorities straight.

Miller and Peterson seem to have escaped scot free, at least for now, but Texans wideout DeAndre Hopkins has just been fined $6000 for wearing the shoes during last weekend’s game against the Bears. A bonified superstar, Hopkins is still on a rookie scale contract, making a modest (by league standards) $1 million this year (with another $1.5 million in bonuses). That’s a lot, certainly, but so is $6000.

Naturally, dude is having none of it. When asked if he’d wear the shoes again, Hopkins said he would, on one condition: Kanye West has to pay his fine. And hey, maybe he should: The shoes have already sold out online.

(It’s worth noting that the Nick Young has worn Yeezy’s in an NBA game, and the league didn’t fine him. Truly, the NFL lives up to its No Fun League status.)

As for the NFL’s rules, they’re a bit archaic, but the fine comes down to colour scheme and pre-approved footwear. Here’s the rules as stated in the official rule book:

Shoes must be of standard football design, including “sneaker” type shoes such as basketball shoes,
cross-training shoes, etc. League-approved tri-colored shoes are permitted with black, white, and one
team color. Each team must select a dominant color for its shoes, either black or white (with shoelace
color conforming to the dominant color of the tongue area of the manufacturer’s shoe). The selection
of dominant color must be reported by each team to the League office no later than July 1 each year.
Each player may select among shoe styles previously approved by the League office. All players on
the same team must wear shoes with the same dominant color. Approved shoe styles will contain one
team color which must be the same for all players on a given team. A player may wear an unapproved
standard football shoe style as long as the player tapes over the entire shoe to conform to his team’s
selected dominant color.

Which, of course, means that the NFL will potentially have to fine players for wearing tributes on their cleats during last weekend’s 9/11 games.