The National Foot­ball League recently announced that for the upcom­ing sea­son, pho­to­jour­nal­ists cov­er­ing NFL foot­ball games will be required to wear bright red vests embla­zoned with Canon and Reebok logos.

Who owns sports pho­tog­ra­phers? Are they objec­tive, inde­pen­dent reporters employed by myr­iad news­pa­pers and magazines—or are they really just cogs in the for-profit NFL’s mar­ket­ing machine?

There’s no way around it: when you are con­trac­tu­ally required to wear con­spic­u­ous adver­tis­ing, you are work­ing for someone.

Until now, still pho­tog­ra­phy has remained strangely inde­pen­dent of video. The NFL has imposed rig­or­ous and com­pli­cated restric­tions on the broad­cast of tele­vi­sion footage of game play since as long ago as the 1950s. Sev­eral years ago the NFL intim­i­dated ESPN into can­celling a show that por­trayed foot­ball play­ers in an unflat­ter­ing light. Last year they imposed con­tro­ver­sial new restric­tions on the pres­ence of crews from local TV sta­tions. The list goes on.

Maybe it is time to accept the fact that pro sports cov­er­age is no longer news, but a prod­uct. The pho­to­jour­nal­ists should go home. I’m sure the NFL can replace them with their own.