National Football League

TD dances add needed fun to the game

Published Dec. 1, 2011 12:00 a.m. ET

Reid Forgrave

The past few days have brought a fanfare of righteous indignation from the NFL, from the media, from fans and even from the even-handed, high-minded arbiter of American sport, Bob Costas, over Buffalo Bills’ wide receiver Stevie Johnson’s touchdown celebration during his team’s loss to the New York Jets.

In case you hadn’t heard, Johnson celebrated a 5-yard touchdown catch in the second quarter Sunday by pretending to shoot himself in the thigh. It was a mocking reference to the Jets’ Plaxico Burress and his ill-fated nightclub self-shooting in 2008 that bought him 20 months in prison. Johnson’s celebration bought the Bills a costly 15-yard penalty and Johnson a $10,000 fine.

Oh my!, a nation said of Johnson’s harmless tweak. How dare he! Classless! An embarrassment! So insensitive!

Come on, NFL: Lighten up. Same to you, football fans: This is supposed to be fun. And most of all, to the outraged football media: Shut up. Stop pretending this stuff hurts the integrity of the game.

And take the time-honored touchdown celebration for what it is: a healthy bit of showmanship in a game that’s supposed to entertain.

In a monologue later that night on Sunday Night Football, Costas used Johnson’s celebration as the crowning example of our culture becoming both graceless and stupid. He suggested coaches start benching players for over-the-top celebrations. And he used Johnson’s celebration as evidence for our nation becoming obsessed with reality-show celebrity, more worried about “keeping up with the Kardashians” than about adhering to our class and our values.

Enough already.

All this politically correct media blathering, all this jumping on Johnson’s back for his tone-deaf but harmless fun, all this criticism of the diva wide receivers who most frequently utilize the over-the-top end-zone dance: It all misses the point.

Touchdown celebrations should remind us that we take our sports (and ourselves) too seriously. It should remind us that sports are entertainment, and athletes are entertainers, so when they push the boundaries of entertainment — like a Lenny Bruce or a Richard Pryor or a Madonna — we should applaud them for it, not wag our fingers like angry schoolmarms.

It’s a lesson Roger Goodell and his cohorts in the No Fun League need to take, too: Loosen up. Don’t slap a $10,000 fine and a 15-yard penalty on every fun-loving moment of taunting and celebration. Realize this is part of what makes your game great, too. And embrace it.

It’s hypocritical for us to feign indignance when a player crosses some imaginary line in a celebration. After all, the highlight shows endlessly replay these most egregious examples of celebration. We must love something about them. Who can forget when Terrell Owens, king of the touchdown celebration, whipped a Sharpie out of his sock, signed the football and gave it to his financial advisor in the stands? Who can forget when The Wide Receiver Formerly Known As Chad Johnson did a Riverdance, or mock-proposed to a cheerleader, or mimicked a Tiger Woods fist-pump? Who can forget Steve Smith rowing a boat, or Randy Moss faux-mooning the Green Bay crowd, or Joe Horn calling his children on a hidden cell phone?

Hate to say it, fun-haters, but these are some of the most distinctive moments in recent NFL memory. We need to stop pretending these are moments of shame. We need to stop levying fines on harmless celebrations. We need to not just forgive Stevie Johnson but lift him up, applaud players for their creativity and showmanship, and remember that this game is one big show.

The touchdown dance started quietly, when back in 1965 New York Giants wide receiver Homer Jones invented the spike. Elmo Wright brought his end-zone dances from the University of Houston to the Kansas City Chiefs in the early 1970s, performing what’s believed to be the first touchdown dance in NFL history. Then came Billy “White Shoes” Johnson of the Houston Oilers, whose “Funky Chicken” dance won over fans. His dancing steps were followed by Ickey Woods’ “Ickey Shuffle,” by Deion Sanders’ high-stepping dance moves, by the Desmond Howard-patented Heisman pose, by the classic, classy Lambeau Leap. The end-zone celebration reached its zenith with the wild, insulting and often hilarious end-zone antics of Owens and Ochocinco.

So why the indignation now? It could be the feeling that the celebration has begun to overshadow the play that caused the celebration. Indeed, with the best celebrations, that’s true. I couldn’t tell you the score of the game between the Cowboys and the 49ers on Sept. 24, 2000. But I can tell you what Terrell Owens did after his two touchdown catches (sprinted to midfield and celebrated on the Cowboys’ iconic star logo) and the name of the Cowboys’ safety who laid Owens out during his second celebration (George Teague).

Even the inventor of the Ickey Shuffle claims to be sickened at what he’s wrought.

“Guys are doing a lot of self-promotion now with the celebration dance. When I did it, it was for the fans, I never did it away from home,” Ickey Woods recently told Yahoo! Sports. “A lot of the guys from my era played for the love of the game. Now it’s a ‘me era.’ It’s a money thing now.”

Oh, how quaint, to think that the players used to play for the love of the game but now only play for themselves. And what a load of crap. What Ickey and his brethren have wrought isn’t some sort of insult to a high-minded pursuit. It’s simply a better show for the fans. Deep down, we love it.

After all, in Costas’ monologue of Stevie Johnson’s touchdown dance, the dance itself — and what Costas posited about what the dance said about the state of American culture — wasn’t the biggest indictment he levied against Johnson. That came when Costas noted “his display cost his team a 15-yard penalty on the ensuing kickoff” — which led to a short field for the Jets and, wouldn’t you know it, a touchdown catch for Plaxico Burress.

It was the penalty, not the action itself, that hurt Johnson’s team. That’s where the flaw lies. Penalize the actions that deserve it: going at another player’s head, hitting a defenseless player, doing whatever Ndamukong Suh decides to do next. Yes, a touchdown dance can go too far, but let’s move the line way, way further back from where it now is. Don’t penalize players for the showmanship that adds an extra note of competitive fire to the game.

I’d belabor this point a bit longer. But the Kardashians are about to go on TV. Gotta keep up!

You can follow Reid Forgrave on Twitter @reidforgrave , become a fan on Facebook or email him at reidforgrave@gmail.com.