Oregon State used a Crying Jordan playcall sign and immediately fumbled

Via cjzer0 on Twitter

First thing: those funny signs on college football sidelines don’t always correspond to play calls. Sometimes they’re decoys. Sometimes only one part of the sign communicates anything.

Still, the headline is entirely accurate.

Oregon State held up a playcall sign that included a Crying Jordan, the universal internet symbol of something bad happening:

And then something bad happened:

The playcall card is a unique element of amateur football, despite grumbling among the professionals:

From Auburn to Oregon to NC State and all points in between, more and more college football teams are holding up cards with memorable pictures to call plays.

You’ve seen them before. They might have Kenny Powers and Rick Ross, an obscure Simpsons character or any other seemingly random image. If you’re Dana Holgerson, your play call sign might be an ode to your love for Red Bull.

These signs are unique to college football. They’re used to help teams run their offenses faster. It eases the mental workload on a quarterback because players can look to the sidelines instead of going into a huddle. They’re also used in a lot of concepts that don’t require the quarterback to change the call or decipher the complexities of a defense.

The proliferation of the sign is becoming bothersome to some in the NFL. Seattle Seahawks general manager John Schneider said it’s making it harder to evaluate quarterbacks.

“It’s hard to evaluate those players at the college level when they look over to the sidelines,” Schneider said at the NFL Scouting Combine on Thursday. “The cards look like turtles and colors and stuff and you have no idea what they’re doing, as compared to watching a guy under center, reading a defense, checking a play.”

Coaches and general managers at the combine seemed more concerned about quarterbacks who relied on cards than those who often run with the ball. Simply looking over at a card eliminates many of the key traits an NFL quarterback has to possess. Houston Texans general manager Rick Smith stressed that card quarterbacks involve much more guesswork.

The lesson: if you’re gonna use a meme, you should use one that communicates good things. Like Snapchat Hot Dog.

Otherwise, you end up like this.