This is a rather strange story that reminded me a lot of high school and why I never want to go back there.

Iran has banned soccer players from sporting ponytails and sculpted beards as part of a campaign to prevent the spread of Western culture in the Islamic state, a soccer federation official said on Thursday.

The federation said those who defied the order ran the risk of being banned from the game.

[...]The ban does not apply to long hair.

“The Prophet Mohammad had long hair. We have no problem with it,” Majd said.

I hate to admit how long ago I was in high school. Let’s just say that the memory this brought back was circa late 60’s, and leave it at that. There were three high schools in my small town. They followed to varying degrees the ultra-conservative directives given by the unofficial town religion (that my family did not belong to). Unlike the Iranian officials, whether Mohammad, or Jesus for that matter, had long hair was irrelevant. No boy was going to graduate from high school if he looked like a hippy. There was at least one boy I knew who was forced to repeat his senior year because he refused to cut his hair. The fact that his grades were good meant nothing. Everything focused on whether his hair hit his collar or not.

Stupid.

But maybe we just need to wait another 30 or 40 years and the Iranian culture will begin to ease off a bit? Maybe if we passed out love beads and flowers to them? Sure. Why not?

Iranian soccer officials, I’m thinking, need to talk to our own Blazer’s officials regarding what happens when a team alienates its fan base:

A crowd of 110,000 watched a match between Iran and Germany in Tehran earlier this month. Iranian women were not allowed to see the match after the football federation upheld a ban on them entering stadiums even though women are the Islamic country’s most passionate fans.

That doesn’t seem like an extremely intelligent move to me. But maybe that’s why I’m not in marketing.