For all those pro football players who think they can dance, yardage is about to be added to the coinage they lost in the past. At the National Football League meetings in Palm Beach, Florida, on Wednesday the club owners are expected to institute a new 15-yard penalty, in addition to fines, for any premeditated group touchdown celebrations that involve two or more players.
It's about time. It's also not enough. The owners should be considering a 25-yard penalty against the celebrating team on the ensuing kickoff that would require celebratory players to answer to their coach and their teammates.
The end zone isn't a dance studio. It's where teammates go to celebrate a touchdown with high-fives and hugs, but not as if they were one of the choreographed acts in, pardon the expression, the Super Bowl halftime show.
NFL coaches seem to be behind behind this proposed rule change. Several complained to Commissioner Paul Tagliabue that excessive celebrations and taunting are show-biz self-promotion, not football. But if a team is penalized on the ensuing kickoff, maybe the players involved will think twice about hip-hopping in the end zone as if auditioning for a rock show.
Penalty yardage on a kickoff won't make any difference late in a one-sided game but it could turn a close game. No matter what the situation, it could also turn a coach's and their teammates' glare on the offending celebrators.
During the commissioner's annual Super Bowl news conference, he mentioned that several coaches had phoned him to request harsher penalties for such premeditated behavior by two or more players. The proposed 15-yard penalty is a stiff immediate punishment. But a 25-yard penalty, no worse than some pass-interference calls, would be a much harsher immediate punishment.
Tagliabue promised at the Super Bowl that "the discipline will continue to escalate until it stops." Under the proposed rule, the discipline would escalate to 15 yards, but 25 yards would have been better.
Individual celebrants are not the target. The proposed 15-yard penalty would not be assessed for one player's spiking of the ball in the end zone no matter how outrageous, jumping to dunk the ball over the crossbar, or doing the Lambeau Leap into the arms of hometown front-row fans. But the 15-yard penalty would be there to be called whenever two or more players form a conga line or think they're the Rockettes.
Although 46 players were fined (but not penalized) for demonstrations last season, the threat of fines didn't suppress their show-biz aspirations. The number was more than double the 18 players fined in 2002, prompting the National Collegiate Athletic Association and the National Federation of State High School Associations to ask that Tagliabue curb unsporting behavior among players and coaches.
Last season, there were also 31 unsportsmanlike or taunting penalties, including a 15-yard penalty on Saints wide receiver Joe Horn after a 13-yard touchdown catch against the Giants on Dec. 14 for pretending to dial his cell phone, which he had hidden inside the padding to a goalpost during the warm-up. Horn was fined US$30,000; his teammate Michael Lewis, who aided and abetted the cell phone caper, was fined US$5,000.
Earlier that same day, Bengals wide receiver Chad Johnson, hid a sign in a snowdrift, then unveiled it after scoring a touchdown. He was fined US$10,000, but no penalty was assessed.
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