Football is fun to watch, but this year the NFL has really cracked down on its peculiar end zone celebration policies.
Players have been celebrating touchdowns with dances for more than 50 years. Some have become quite iconic, from parodies of Key and Peele’s one-too-many pelvic thrusts to pulling cellphones from goal post padding. Some of the most famous dances so far this season have been by Antonio Brown, wide receiver for the Pittsburg Steelers and former “Dancing with the Stars” contestant. Brown has been fined more than $24,000 already for celebration dances. His dance? Twerking.
It seems that cheerleaders dancing half-naked on sidelines is acceptable, but a player twerking in football pads is downright deplorable. According to the NFL, celebrations that are “sexually suggestive or can otherwise be construed as being in poor taste” are considered unsportsmanlike. Brown immediately received a flag after he scored a touchdown in a game against the Washington Redskins. His first fine totaled $6,076, but his penalty for hip thrusting three weeks later cost him four times as much.
Celebration penalties were put in place to reign in excessive celebrations. Excessive, like the Ickey Shuffle, which lasted far longer than Brown’s nanosecond twerk or his hip thrusts. Excessive, like Terrell Owen pulling a marker out of his sock and signing the ball immediately after his score. Brown has been rightly penalized for celebrations in the past, but his dances this year are for pure entertainment value.
Billy “White Shoes” Johnson, who played in the NFL for 14 years, once said, “We’re gladiators. We’re in the arena. We’re supposed to give a show. We’re supposed to be entertaining.”
Most complaints seem to be coming from the “armchair quarterbacks.” It’s easy to complain about someone’s enthusiasm for success when we aren’t the ones who earned it. Those who do complain about celebration dances should probably be reminded that they are not the ones working hard and putting on a show. Let the players dance, for goodness sake. If they work hard to achieve their goals, a little twerk in the end zone just adds to the excitement. This is football after all, not “Footloose.”
