In a bizarre publicity stunt, Procter & Gamble has gotten Lloyd’s of London to insure the hair of Pittsburgh Steelers safety Troy Polamalu for $1 million.  Procter & Gamble owns Head & Shoulders, America’s most beloved dandruff shampoo, which employs Polamalu as a spokesman, mainly because his hair is nearly three feet long.  The company told Reuters that Lloyd’s “created the first ever insurance policy to protect his iconic mane for the entire NFL season.”

If I was a stockholder in P&G, I would be pissed.  I highly doubt anyone in Pittsburgh knows what shampoo is, much less purchases it, much less purchases it based on which long-haired Steeler endorses it.  Do they really think people in Pittsburgh are really going to hear this news and think, wow, Troy Polamalu has a lot of hair, the product he endorses could probably get the coal mine stink out of my hair at night while I sleep a few hours before returning once again the next morning to the miserable depths of the earth where I dig out my meager existence.

Still Polamalu’s been taking Procter & Gamble’s money for the past two years. The safety says he hasn’t cut his hair since 2000, three years before the Steelers drafted him in the first round out of USC — he says his long, flowing locks are a tribute to his Samoan ancestors.

If nothing else, it’s a good excuse to watch him getting tackled by his million-dollar hair: