Give me more Sharpies, more end-zone cell phones, more excess.
Give me more fun with my games.
No celebration, no matter how cartoonish or choreographed, is too excessive.
Scoring ought to be a rowdy party. There’s enough time for rigidity the rest of the week.
I’d like to see a little more of the personalities the NFL loves to keep hidden behind those face masks while trying to white-wash its product into antiseptic sameness.
And, please, stop with that talk about how Terrell Owens is trampling sportsmanship and urinating on an ideal. He’s playing, OK? Let’s not turn his carrying of a football into a referendum on how to raise America’s children.
The NFL fears anarchy, of course. You give one individual too many rights and too much freedom, and next thing you know, the entire republic will be looking to overthrow the oppressive government with its individuality. Can’t have that. Letting one man dance in the end zone, musty curmudgeons like Cote say, is the last stop before sex and drugs.
NO FUN LEAGUE
So the NFL is going to flabbergasting lengths to stop anything that feels like fun. Exhibition football has been littered by raining penalty flags for things like, no joke, one guy spontaneously and harmlessly leaping into another guy’s hug in the end zone.
Yogi Berra jumping into Don Larsen’s arms after that World Series perfect game? That’s not allowed in today’s NFL.
It isn’t the celebrations that are excessive; it is the penalties.
It’s easy to see why players like Cincinnati receiver Chad Johnson go to great lengths with their shimmy-shaking.
It’s the only way for them to get noticed. Johnson put aside a tax deductible of $50,000 last season for celebrations he knew would incur fines, and good for him.
He likes attention, and it got him more of it than leading the AFC in receiving did.
T.O. is not nearly the receiver that quiet Marvin Harrison is, but he has gotten infinitely more pub.
Maybe you don’t like your athletes so shamelessly grabbing at the spotlight, but they’re the ones doing the scoring, not you, and they ought to be able to celebrate it how they wish. You wouldn’t like T.O. coming into your home and telling you that your bar mitzvah is a little too over the top, would you?
Race plays into this some. As Owens says, the black guys get in the most trouble for excessive celebrations because they’re the ones doing all the scoring.
ISSUE OF RACE?
Don’t want to be too black and white about this, but here’s a test:
Go ahead and make a list of all the people in sports who annoy you with their histrionics and flamboyance and noise. Rickey Henderson? Warren Sapp? Charles Barkley? Michael Irvin? Deion Sanders? Are any of the people on your list white? Even one?
It’s hard to get around this: The NFL has a lot of old, white men making rules for young, black ones.
Again, these are supposed to be fun and games.
Too much fun?
That ought to be celebrated, not penalized.
___(c) 2004, The Miami Herald. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

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