College Football Touchdown Celebrations

The Celebration Penalties in College Football

I have been talking about this on a few blogs, now I get to rip up on this.

Saturday I was watching Virginia vs. Duke (and WOW, how bad is Virginia this year..) and was watching a play where a Duke player intercepts the ball and runs in for the touchdown.

As he’s headed to the end zone, the jumps like Superman (or a lame duck) and flies into the end zone. He is happy and is celebrating the touchdown, while the fans are going nuts and cheering. Everything looks celebratory…until he gets to the sideline.

As he flew in the end zone, the refs threw a flag for “celebration” and when the player from Duke got to the sidelines, he was met by a FURIOUS coach who ripped into him about what he did. No sooner than he finished, another coach lit up into him like a gas balloon in a forest fire. I watched as I swore that guy shrunk to about one foot high.

This has been an issue that the NCAA has been fighting for years…and personally I think these old farts are as blind as a bat when it comes to the issue of celebrations.

Personally speaking, I think the NCAA has done a horrible job trying to force these young kids to act like “solders” when they are playing a game. I think it really stinks that the NCAA feels that showing emotion and celebrating success is wrong to do.

But let’s not fool ourselves…it goes MUCH deeper than that. There is an absolute hypocrisy in how the NCAA lords over these kids…and let’s not lose sight of that. These are kids only 1-4 years removed from high school. I just find is a terrible injustice that the NCAA is on this crusade to “tame” these young men when they let BEER commercials run virtually every game they do. Think about that….college education and alcohol…..and the NCAA doesn’t seem to “get it”.

Anyway, here’s my argument about celebrations:

I base my argument on how sports are seen now in 2008...not in 1968 when your daddy was in school or gramps was strutting around in a suit and tie talking about some fraternity. We’re talking about 2008, and yet those in charge of the NCAA apparently don’t feel that young men who work their butts off in athletics deserve to celebrate every now and then.

There are a lot of comparisons here. First, let’s talk about college basketball. Of all the commentators that do basketball, WHO is the most exciting….

Dick Vitale!

Who is one of the most BORING…

Billy Packer.

I didn’t say Billy Packer was wrong, or bad at what he does, because he is quite informative, but there is a clear difference in the excitement he adds to a game, and what Gus Johnson adds to a game. I swear, Gus will sell you a game and have you on the edge of your seat if it is close. I actually LOOK for games that he is doing.

But that’s because college sports is about excitement, and you can’t have that without emotion.

In football it goes the same way. One of the better announcers I hear on television is Mark Jones because he understands the idea of celebrations, and I can fully appreciate that. This guy knows that those student athletes work their butt off every day in the extremities of the season, and fight and claw and do everything they can to help their team and university win. I have heard Mark Jones defend some celebration calls, and I agree with him 100%.

But one of the other commentators I have tried to avoid listening to is Mike Patrick. I really got turned off on him in how he seems to really degrade players that get flagged for “celebrations”. It just really seems in his mind that doing anything like that is, as he has been heard to say more than once, “just plain stupid”.

See, people like that are the same ones that believe that people ought to act like Barry Sanders, and just “act like you’ve been there”. These stuck up people want you to believe that there is no need or desire to celebrate or show emotion, because that is what you were “bred” to do.

And sure, using Barry Sanders is a nice comparison…but Emmitt Smith was a great running back too…and he showed emotion MANY times. So check and mate!

It really takes the fun out of college sports when some stuffy commentator feels like he has the right to sit on a soapbox and tell everybody that celebrating (in moderation) is wrong and NOBODY should do it.

Why does it just feel like the NCAA has a chain around the necks of these athletes and want to keep them in check? To me, the situation with Duke was disappointing…not for the player, but for the team. I don’t blame the kid, I blame the coaches who apparently don’t know what it’s like to see success…

But that makes perfect sense…it IS Duke football….

It’s like what one of the commentators said during that incident. He said that the coaches may be upset with that kid because he should have acted like they’ve been there before…problem was, that kid (and Duke) have NOT been there before.

And there is a great hypocrisy in the “celebrations”. The NCAA and the old stuffy refs like to throw those flags when players do it, but when the television stations put their promo package of the next upcoming game….what do you see?

The celebrations! Why? Because that is part of the pageantry of college sports. In fact, I recently bought a used game of NCAA 06 for the Playstation 2 (yeah, old yes, but it was 99 cents!). Can you guess who is on the COVER of that game?

Desmond Howard…doing the Heisman pose!

It is so ironic that the NCAA condemns any acts of celebration, but are very quick to profit off of it. If a player from Alabama did a dive into the end zone during that Georgia game, he would be flagged and penalized for it…but I promise you that move will be shown 100,000,000 times on ESPN, Fox Sports and every sports show in the nation. And the NCAA won’t condemn it one bit.

Hypocrisy.

But I do understand that there has to be some limitations. For example, we can’t have anybody out there doing a Thriller video in the end zone. That’s too much. But how do you cage in the emotions of a growing young man in a very aggressive sport? How do you tell a guy to “turn it off” when coaches teach them to always keep it on?

And what makes me sick is that many times you see these old refs who like to get in the face of the players the second they score. That makes me sick. A guy catches a 50 yard pass and runs into the end zone and almost as soon as he turns around to greet his teammates the ref is all in his grill (literally) trying to discourage this guy from doing anything.

That really ticks me off how these old-timers just ASSUME that when a player gets into the end zone, it’s time to do the Electric Slide! But you see, the problem with this goes a lot deeper than just “rules”, it goes into culture.

You may not like the culture of pop/hip hop/rap or other genres of music out now, but that does not mean you have to have a prejudice against it. And I think that is the problem. A lot of the refs are Caucasian and most of the players in college football are African American. What we are looking at is a chasm of differences and a huge lack of understanding.

I am a HUGE college football fan, and I watch almost any college game I can get on television. I have seen a lot of Historically Black College games and you almost NEVER see flags for celebration. I didn’t say they NEVER throw them, because that implies that athletes never go overboard. They do, but sometimes refs need to keep their yellow snot-rags in their pocket.

Are we saying that this has something to do with race…sure. But I may imply that it is more about the NCAA and refs who have no idea what true celebration is about in football, and can’t tell the difference between that and EXCESSIVE. See, that is where the problem is. An old 50 year old ref had no clue to what excessive is when you consider what a young athlete has to go through in day, week, season or a few years of extensive training in a highly competitive sport.

Most people may not argue that the “Flintstones” are a “safe” cartoon about a family that anybody can watch. But some might argue that there is too much violence in it. There is a difference of excessiveness. Some of the same people that like the “Flintstones” might think “The Simpsons” are too excessive. Others may not. Further still, those that might like “The Simpsons” might think “Family Guy” is too excessive. But all are cartoons about families. We just have different views of what we accept.

Isn’t it possible that a lot of these celebration penalties are based on the personal beliefs of the refs? Heaven forbid I’m playing in a big time college football game and find out that the refs calling the game hate hip hop. They’re likely to flag me just for bobbing my head!

And I guess the reason why this goes on like this is because generally speaking, the people in charge feel like these young men need chains around their necks. I mean, after all, football is a savage sport, and savage sports demand savage individuals. They need “taming” and they need to understand that their “way” of celebrating is wrong and not what the NCAA is about…

While CBS, ABC, ESPN, NBC, FOX and all the other networks and media use every celebration shot they can find to promote the next game…and put money into NCAA’s pockets.

The celebration penalty has already cost at least one team a possible victory in Washington, it is a terrible injustice that is purely based on culture acceptance. If I hated everything about hip hop or rap, that prejudice is going to carry over to how I see young men react to celebratory situations. So to me, if I hated rap or hip hop, an African American scoring a touchdown is a red flag for me to either get in his face IMMEDIATELY and tell him to leave the field or get my yellow snot-rag ready to throw the second he does anything I don’t approve of.

So…what if a ref is an Atheist… would he flag a person who gets on his knees to give thanks? I mean, it IS a celebration, isn’t it? A guy who drops to his knees to give thanks to the Lord for the strength and agility to get to the end zone is no different from a guy who does the “raise the roof” when he scores. But guess who gets flagged?

The NFL once tried to put an end to these celebrations, which lead to a lot of people complaining about the No Fun League, and since then they have relaxed those rules a bit. I don’t mind throwing a flag when TO goes to get a Sharpie, or if Joe Horn slips a cell phone under the goal post, that is WAAAAAY too much and clearly excessive. But what happened to the Billy White Shoes Johnson dance? What’s up with that?

Celebrations in the end zone is as much a part of the emotion of sports as the guys that play them. And when you’re talking about college football, you’re talking about emotions on a huge scale. Hey, I’ve been there. I used to be a DJ at our campus radio station and I played dance music on Fridays and Saturdays until midnight. I went to some of those frat parties, heck I Djed some of them!

I know what it’s like to enjoy life and enjoy college, they say those are the best days of your life. But I also know how hard those guys work to make the team, and to stay on that team. I knew a lot of football players that worked so hard that their grades were a problem. These guys sacrifice a lot more than the average Joe could ever imagine.

These guys go through grueling practices that the average person would not DARE attempt, while also trying to keep his grades up so he does not fall into Academic Suspension. While I’m running around on campus writing for the school newspaper and working at the campus radio station, they are beating their brains out in practice. Teams have to keep a very, very tight grip on these young men, to “discipline” them and get them to focus. Days, weeks and months of this, to get these athletes to compete at their very best. So much emotion, desire, hope are locked in each heart of those football players, unleashed on that day when they play ball.

Everything they have been taught and drilled comes into play and in ONE shining moment, they get their chance to help the team, and they get into the end zone. But in the excitement of scoring, they may or may not have gone a little too far…and get penalized…

And then somebody like Mike Patrick has the nerve to say “that was just plain stupid”. You know the problem is that a lot of the commentators of sports never truly understood the true emotions of celebration, and how there is such a release of joy and success in that split second. It really takes the taste out of an otherwise enjoyable game.

Am I saying to allow ALL celebrations? Of course not. Some guys go too far, but there needs to be a very clear understanding of what is allowed. If a player scores and puts up a “B-Boy stance” they would throw the flag at him. I can see if he flipped off the fans or even spiked the ball, but what if he tossed the ball to the side…is THAT a penalty?

We know a few years ago guys used to take off their helmets when they scored, and the NCAA did away with that quickly, as did the NFL. You cannot remove your helmet while on the field of play. Ok, I get that. You established clearly what NOT to do, and the rule is clear. But the penalties today are often based on what the referee believes your intention was.

I don’t suppose the NCAA will ever truly look into this, because to me, as long as the chain is around the athlete’s necks, they can control them…it’s about controlling emotions, which really is against everything about college sports. You can’t eliminate it because it’s part of human nature. No, not every receiver who runs in the end zone is going to “act like a fool”. Some guys are easy going, like Barry Sanders. But others that are JUST AS TALENTED grew up with emotion and will display it from time to time, like Emmitt Smith.

College football is a game of emotions, just look at the fans that come to see it. It excites the young kids to the college students to the fans and alumni of those teams. From the young to the old, there is high emotion…how do you expect these players to NOT be able to enjoy the moment?

I personally think one of the best celebrations I ever seen to date was what Georgia did last year, when they ran out on the field after a touchdown. I think that was pure GENIOUS and that’s the kinda coach I would give my last breath for in a game. That kinda coach understand what emotions can do to help a team, and you don’t cage it like a wild animal.

Yeah, I know they lost to Alabama, but I still like what Georgia did.

Anyway, this could go a lot longer, but I better cut is short for now. I just think the NCAA is fooling themselves and live in a complete hypocrisy when they set out to punish young men who work hard and get a moment to enjoy their work. It’s so ironic that the NCAA will forbid those acts, but IF those same acts are done, they have no problem using that to promote the next game. I guarantee you, if there is any promotion packages with Duke Football, I BETCHA that dive in the end zone will be used…why? Because it is about emotion, which is what college football is all about.

So I’ll just keep watching college football and avoiding guys who are so out of touch that they still listen to Pat Boone, but will get all stuck up of somebody like Pat White of West Virginia did anything that even resembles “something stupid”.

They can’t possibly love football as much as I do…I love ALL of the college pageantry which includes the emotions of the game. They’re just there to get one of those big pay checks…not that I would refuse that myself, but that’s neither here nor there….

(as he looks around for coins to buy a soda)

Anyway, that’s my vent for today…there is a lot more I could say, but I’ll let it stand there for now….