Rulemakers are ruining the game of football

Anyone reading this who happens to follow college football knows what I’m referring to.  Starting this season, a new rule has been implemented in which excessive celebration that occurs before the end of the play (i.e. before the TD is scored) may be called by the referees as a live-ball foul, effectively taking the points off the board and placing the ball at the spot of the foul.  While the NCAA Football Rules Committee sees excessive celebration as problem, I see excessive rulemaking as a problem.  There’s already been an incident in Ohio high school football in which a team was penalized because a player pointed to the sky after scoring a touchdown to honor a friend that was killed in a car accident the previous week:

While this isn’t exactly the same scenario (this was considered a dead-ball foul), the 15-yard penalty still resulted in excellent field position, which led to a game-winning field goal from the opponent.  Was this really considered that flagrant that the game needed to be decided by the officials and not the players?  He wasn’t taunting other players, he was celebrating with his team. And because this kind of thing has been emphasized to referees all across the country, he was flagged for merely standing in the end zone with his hand in the air.

But I contend that this mentality of penalizing players for even the slightest show of emotion is a symptom of society as a whole, where today it’s becoming more and more popular to “punish success.”  We are being taught to pity the loser at the expense of the winner, and this nearly always leads to no winners (and yes – I realize the article states that everyone goes home a winner. I disagree with this sentiment).

I actually take the complete opposite extreme.  As long as there is no taunting, I’d prefer there be zero penalties for excessive celebration.  Intercollegiate athletes, especially those in major college athletic programs, spend a radically disproportionate amount of time practicing and preparing for games compared to their compensation (full scholarship, room and board, and a meager stipend of about $100/week to cover miscellaneous expenses such as weekend meals, clothing, etc.) If they’re not allowed to be paid to act as “professionals”, then why should they be expected to behave as such?  They spend so much time and devote so much energy to perfecting their craft; why shouldn’t they be allowed to “blow off a little steam” when they perform well?

And even if we’re talking about professional sports, who exactly are the athletes hurting by doing a little dance after celebrating a touchdown?  Did the Ickey Shuffle ever actually hurt someone?

So I say, let them celebrate! The college atmosphere would be so much better if players were allowed to leap into the stands after a big play, as professional athletes are. Or perhaps pull a Sharpie out, autograph a football, and give it to a fan?  Of course the athlete would also be responsible for the cost of replacing the football, so it wouldn’t be an every-day celebration.

The emotional high of making a play to win the big game is part of the appeal of sports as a whole.  Coddling the the loser by crippling the winner benefits neither the loser nor the winner.  It only benefits the members of the rules committee, who have an excuse to take a 4-day vacation every February to attend the meeting.