Every time I think of these great things to write, someone beats me to it. Today, Mr. College Football writes about eliminating the excessive celebration penalty. There is little doubt the column is slightly reactionary; after all, his Filthy Leghumpers lost an extremely close, extremely sloppy game of football to the equally lucky Corn Dogs. (Before you go crazy, Captain Kens of the world, I do realize that no self-respecting Cajun serves corn dogs at a tailgate. I’m pretty sure the Barners thought of it that way because they knew it would piss you off.) Tony Barnhart, and I am not the first to proclaim this, is probably the best college football writer out there today, so without treading too much on his opinion, I will attempt to tackle the issue myself (no pun intended).
First of all, he is exactly right. There is very little subjective standard applied when assessing these penalties; the rule often reads like mandatory minimum sentencing. Exempting the A.J. Green excessive call (not to mention the makeup call when LSU scored to tie the game), does anyone really think Jake Locker was taunting BYU at the end of the game? Washington was one of the worst teams in the NCAA last year and the kid had some serious gumption to lead his vastly undertalented team across the field to score in the closing minutes. Simply raising his hands to celebrate while the football was in it should not constitute excessive. Locker did nothing spiteful or derogatory; he was simply raising his arms as to say, “Gee whiz wow, we might actually win a game this year!” Instead, he was flagged for excessive celebration because he violated the mere letter of the law by throwing the football above his head and sending it skyward. Washington went on to miss the extra point and lose the game. (Note: WHINY GATOR FAN COMPLAINT COMING UP! EVERYONE REINFORCE THE STEREOTYPE!) Any time an opponent of the Gators makes a big play and responds with a Gator Chomp can do so with impunity, whereas responding with school pride nets you excessive celebration. (OVER!) Meanwhile, your Golden Taters on the Golden Domers can do practically whatever they feel like and not get flagged. This appalling inequity of calls is reason enough to get rid of the stupid penalty.
Barnhart and many others correctly note that the A.J. Green call had a huge effect on the game. Georgia was then forced to kick the ball off at the 15 yard line, giving LSU by default great field position, and the rest, as they say, is history. Simply put, there was no reason to consider Green’s celebration excessive and the same call on Charles Scott after his touchdown, were it not a make-up call that never needed to be made, was equally egregious.
People like Mike Belotti believe excessive celebration needs to be more rigidly enforced. What a load of nonsense. There are enough problems enforcing the Draconian outcome of the rule as it stands. Aside from the hugely inconsistent and inequitable assessments of the penalty, college football runs the risk of having an NBA level of poor referees. Sometimes forgetting that not everyone pays lots of money to see men in striped shirts do their jobs, the referees in NBA games wield an inordinate amount of power and David Stern chooses to ignore/disregard any criticism hurled at the nearly universally regarded worst referees in sports. Were Belotti’s plan implemented, I would argue for a reduction ad absurdum to NBA levels of garbage calls.
Proponents of keeping the rule (whoever they are) state for sportsmanship purposes the rule needs to stay in place. Granting their argument, why not specifically define what excessive is, instead of giving these abstract terms? The throat slash gesture is universally regarded as poor sportsmanship and, in some sports, ejectionable and finable. Codify it; don’t leave it to mere custom. Use the other teams’ gesture, removal of the ball from the field of play, having your whole team run onto the field after the first score of the game are also things that are excessive. (I should note here that Tebow certainly did deserve that penalty; he was clearly acting in a taunting manner) We can eliminate a lot of this subjectivity and supposed referee bias by just putting these penalties into writing. Hell, let’s call the penalty “taunting” or something like that. I don’t do this stuff for a living, so maybe the Rules Committee can figure something out.
Sports in general are one of the things in life for which most people possess great passion. Celebration should not be limited by these archaic guidelines. I have full confidence in referees that a more well-defined rule of taunting, as opposed to excessive celebration, would be more equitably enforced than the present bastardization of what was once a noble rule.
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