The Touchdown Celebration: Let Them Twerk
Outside of being the most popular professional sport in the United States, we should call the NFL what it is; a spectacular form of entertainment.
In order to truly understand the NFL, you need to first understand how it makes money. The league itself consists of 32 total teams, with the average NFL team being worth an estimated $1.97 billion. That means that, combined, the franchises are valued at upwards of $62 billion.
Luckily for us, the Green Bay Packers are the only team publicly owned by fans and are therefore required to release their financial information annually. What the Packers 2015 financial statement revealed is that the NFL as an organization makes a sh!t load of money from their various TV deals. How much money you ask? Let’s just say it’s enough to pay for 10 Pluto Missions.
The well-oiled machine that it is, the NFL understands that their strongest form of revenue comes directly from TV deals and ultimately audience viewership. In order to maintain viewership and drive revenue, the NFL must continuously evolve. This evolution can most obviously be seen through a number of crucial changes that have been made to the game over the past several years. Some of the biggest changes directly involve player safety, an issue that’s caused concern for both fans and players alike. A number of changes for the 2016 season involve experimentation with enhancing the game. For example, moving the spot of the extra point kick back, and the touchback spot up from the 20 yard-line to the 25 yard-line.
Some of these changes, especially those in player safety, have shed positive light on the sport itself. Recently, however, you may have heard the NFL being referred to as the “No Fun League”, or you may have read articles about viewership decreasing for a multitude of reasons.
As a personal diehard fan of the NFL, here are a number of reasons why I think viewership may be down:
- No one, not even the league referees, understands what does and what does not qualify as a “catch”.
- This is a common sequence of events while watching an NFL game: Touchdown, commercial, kick-off, commercial. WHY DO WE NEED SO MANY COMMERCIALS?!
- DeAngelo Williams was fined for having words on his eye black to honor his mother who passed away from breast cancer. Not great!
- The NFL consistently fines players for uniform elements that don’t fit within the guidelines of the NFL’s strict dress code.
- You are, by no means, allowed to celebrate, enjoy, or show-off your newest dance moves when scoring a touchdown.
As that same diehard fan of the NFL, here is an easy first step to increasing viewership:
- MAKE TOUCHDOWN CELEBRATIONS FUN AGAIN.
In order to fully explain this post, I felt it necessary to give a brief background in regards to the NFL and how its revenue is in large part attributed to the fact that the sport is a form of entertainment. By definition, entertainment means the action of providing or being provided with amusement or enjoyment. Sports as entertainment are meant to be fun, for both the athlete and the fan. Sure, professional athletes are playing sports as their job, but who’s to say you aren’t supposed to do what you love?
Perhaps the biggest element of any given sport that can be directly correlated to ‘fun’ is the aspect of scoring a goal, touchdown, basket, shooting a hole in one, hitting a home run, or crossing a finish line. In any given situation, each of these achievements often comes with a well-deserved celebration. For some on the professional stage, they may only get one chance in their life to celebrate such an achievement, and that’s if they even make it onto that stage!
People may argue that in a sport like the NFL, celebrating after scoring a touchdown is simply the natural order of things. Historically, the inception of the NFL’s first “touchdown celebration” was a result of avoiding a fine by the then league commissioner.
The first official NFL celebration can be attributed to Homer Jones of the New York Giants, who in 1965 started in his first career game against the Philadelphia Eagles. A number of Jones teammates had previous celebrated touchdowns by launching footballs into the stands, a punishable offense of $50, enforced by then commissioner Pete Rozelle. After scoring his first touchdown against the Eagles, and in order to avoid punishment, Jones chose to slam the football directly into the frigid tundra. Jones coined his celebration “The Spike”, and as the rest as they say, is history.
As the NFL evolved, so to0 did the NFL touchdown celebration. There was a sentiment for wanting to demonstrate the understanding that players were out there not only as professionals, but to give their audience a show that would resonate. Billy “White Shoes” Johnson, one of the first to bring dance moves to the end zone, put it this way: “We’re gladiators. We’re in the arena. We’re supposed to give a show. We’re supposed to be entertaining.”
Fast forward from 1965–2016 (insert crazy time warp sound). For a look at the 2016 touchdown celebration, please see below:
Besides consistently watching this over and over again and laughing each and every time, the current rules of the NFL regarding touchdown celebrations have forced players to simply act like robots after scoring…which is…well…sad.
In 2015 there were a total of 9 penalties over the course of the entire season for prolonged or excessive celebrations. In the first two weeks of the 2016 season, they had already thrown the flag five times for the same offense. In 2015, a total of 29 flags for taunting. In 2016 over the course of the first few weeks, 10. Now, let’s be clear, I’m by no means saying there aren’t excessive celebrations that do in fact warrant some form of punishment or fine. I believe there is in fact a fine line between what is appropriate and what is not…but where is that line drawn?
The NFL’s rules on celebrations have changed over the years. The 1984 rulebook stated “any prolonged, excessive, or premeditated celebration by individual players or groups of players will be construed as unsportsmanlike conduct.” And, like only a rule from 1984 could, it includes a note that “spontaneous expressions of exuberance will be permitted.”
As a child of the 1990’s, I can confirm that I did in fact live through and cherish the golden age of the touchdown celebration. By the mid-2ooo’s, the NFL was tossing around $30,000 fines like hot cakes. If you are having trouble remembering which two players stood at the forefront of this golden age, let me remind you:
Standing on the Dallas Cowboys star…maybe a bit disrespectful. Pretending to bribe a referee…perhaps a little unethical. The media showing up to Terrell Owen’s house to watch him lift weights…MY GOD IF THAT’S NOT ENTERTAINMENT. Seriously, can someone check the ratings please?
In the past few years, the NFL has continued to doll out major fines for celebrations deemed outside the lines of the league’s standards. As a fan, I simply ask: why can’t we have nice things? Do I remember who the San Francisco 49ers beat in the game during which, after scoring, T.O. signed the football? No. Will I always remember the fact that he signed a football after scoring a touchdown? Hell yeah.
In the NFL, the fine for a touchdown celebration comes after the game is completed and the final score is locked-in forever. In real-time, the flag for a celebration carries an in-game penalty, one that can potentially affect the outcome. From a player’s perspective, they deserve the ability to celebrate. As Cam Newton, who amazingly has never been flagged for excessively celebrating, so eloquently stated, “You know that I know that we all know football is an extremely hard sport to play. And I think it’s a reward as a player. I’m going to stay out of it, but I think we need to keep doing things that will make us celebrate.”
From a fan’s perspective, we need the touchdown celebration just as much as the players. Putting yourself through 8 straight hours of RedZone on any given Sunday is no easy task, especially when each game on average is only about 11 total minutes of play.
In the first week of the 2016, Antonio Brown, one of the best WR’s in the game and touchdown celebration extraordinaire, got fined $12,154 for this celebration:
When asked by Doug Gottlieb about his Twerking dance, Brown responded, “I never want to put my team in a bad predicament. Maybe I’ll keep (the twerking) to a minimum of two pumps instead of three.”
I think I speak for all us as NFL fans when I say, pump on AB, pump on.
