No Celebrating At All? NCAA Mulling New Rules on Taunting, Eye Black
Perhaps it’s because of my youth, or my belief in the privilege of celebration granted to a touchdown-scorer, or my understanding that all these sports are supposed to be entertainment. In any case, I don’t think I could disagree more strongly with the NCAA’s proposed rule changes on taunting.⇥If passed, players who draw flags for taunting gestures on their way to a touchdown would have the penalty assessed from the spot of the foul, taking away the score. Penalties that occur in the end zone would continue to be assessed on the extra-point attempt, 2-point conversion try or ensuing kickoff.⇥⇥The change would take effect in 2011 and on the NCAA’s web site, a release said the proposal received near-unanimous support.⇥
⇥⇥“Taunting and prolonged individual acts have no place in our game, and our officials have generally handled these rules well,” said former Oregon coach Mike Bellotti, the committee chair. “This is just another step in maintaining our game’s image and reflecting the ideals of the NCAA overall.”⇥
The idea, clearly, is to clean up a little of the celebratory culture by making taunting tantamount to wrenching a facemask, hitting a defenseless player, spearing a player with a helmet, or trying to cause another player harm. My bone of contention, obviously, is that no one is harmed by taunting.
"Taunting and prolonged individual acts" very rarely cross any boundaries of taste in college football. Usually, the former is a punt or throw of the ball into the stands, and the latter is something like Tim Tebow inciting the crowd, which SEC fans with no love for Florida have complained about for four years. Neither of those things is particularly ruinous to the game's image, unless you think college football players should be automatons who sublimate their own individual expression to a team. Might that be what Bellotti and other athletic figures are looking for?
Even more absurd is the contention that “our officials have generally handled these rules well.” Oh, really?
How about A.J. Green’s “celebration penalty” against LSU this fall? You know, the one the SEC said shouldn’t have been called after the fact? How about Jake Locker’s celebration getting flagged in 2008? That was bad enough that an ESPN parody of it seemed spot-on.
Not only were both of those calls questionable at best, they swung games. College football prides itself on having the best regular season in sports, because every game matters. I’m not sure how that squares with having seasons derailed by terrible judgment calls on 18-to-21-year-old collegians celebrating.
And adding the ability to make taunting calls spot fouls to a referee’s repertoire of judgment calls is supposed to make that better? What if a ref hears a stray expletive on an interception return? Is that a foul? Is soaring high over the goal line when no defenders are around a foul? Gesturing to the crowd? High-stepping like Deion while avoiding tacklers? There are simply too many ways this could be selectively interpreted to screw one team over for it to work, and that’s without considering that live ball fouls for taunting at the beginning of a play could wipe out fantastic runs.
Here’s a rule that would work, considering both an effort to curb the worst excess celebrations and protect the game from overzealous referees’ subjective calls: Celebration penalties may only be assessed for “clear and egregious” violations of the rules, which are limited to: gestures that incite the crowd or opposing players, deliberate removal of the ball or other items from the field of play, exceptional self-aggrandizement, obscenity, or a duration of more than 25 seconds. Celebration penalties are dead ball fouls. Celebrators will be penalized by the same yellow card-red card rules of soccer, with particularly egregious violators (think gun gestures, or obscene ones) ejected and suspended from their next game, and anyone flagged receiving a warning. Two warnings in a season and that player is out for their next game.
This a) removes the incredibly stupid live ball foul potential; b) puts specific guidelines in place that players will know how to follow; c) removes a good bit of the judgment from the officials; d) provides the NCAA and coaches with a framework for punishing repeat violators; and e) incentivizes making bowl games or spices up end-of-year rivalries for players, who will have what amounts to a “one celebration free” card if their coaches sign off on taking the penalty. I understand that my method condones celebration, but I don’t think anyone wants a method that condemns it, except martinet coaches and PR-obsessed NCAA officials.
But, of course, that would give power to the individual, and the NCAA wouldn’t want that. That’s why the most visible avenue for individual expression in recent times, writing messages on eye black, is going to be a no-no going forward.
The article notes that the NCAA will be "requiring players who wear 'eye black' to use solid black with no words, logos, numbers or other symbols" if the proposal made by the Football Rules Committee passes. Much like the rules for celebration above, though, it seems that there is no lack of support for this rule. That's sad, though understandable: freedom of speech is already very much limited from the time a player signs a letter of intent to his last moment on the field, and eye black was a loophole that many players—most prominently, Tebow, who scrawled Bible verse references on his—used for fairly harmless ends. Now, it's closed, and only after the most visible athlete in college sports this generation has finished making use of it. (Nice timing, eh?)
The NCAA doesn’t want players to do anything that would reflect poorly on it, and enjoys the ability to sell one homogeneous product of college athletics. That’s why NCAA Tournament courts are beginning to bear just one boring design, and why these celebration rules are the tip of the iceberg.
The personality, pageantry, and passion of college sports are large parts of what make them more appealing than their professional counterparts to many fans. But those things, because they are a little volatile, also present risks to the NCAA’s image, and the powers that be will surely scrub their games clean to make sure no offense is taken.
After all, why should the masses be able to enjoy anything that could conceivably offend someone? The players may be right to call themselves entertainers. But the NCAA is in the entertainment business. And businesses know that keeping every customer partially satisfied is better than making most ecstatic.
↵
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
See More:
