The National Football League rarely displays a sense of humor on any topic, largely because the people who run the sport are 74 years old going on 103. People that old and rich are rarely amused, and even more infrequently amusing. Any attempt by this cohort to understand what people less comfortable and death-adjacent consider funny would, ironically enough, be pretty amusing.
Thus the news-to-be that Derek Carr, the FDA's most effective over-the-counter antidote to cool, is going to be fined $14,000 for a) celebrating the New Orleans Saints' pivotal fifth touchdown in a 44-19 thrashing of the Dallas Cowboys, and b) using a vintage Michael Jackson dance move to do it.
Never mind the move itself, which the Associated Press described in appropriately clinical language as Carr "swiveling his raised right knee before placing one hand in front of his groin area and thrusting his hips forward." That is just the NFL's technical way to get into Carr's wallet and not worth much analysis. The truth is this: someone in the league office has asked the rhetorical question, "Can we stop uncool people from lifting dance moves from someone who's been dead for 15 years, and who would 66 years old if he wasn't?" and then answered their own question with a cheery, "How can we not?" For a league presently going all in on Taylor Swift and fresh off hiring Kendrick Lamar to do the Super Bowl halftime show, the demographics on Carr’s musty old dance move are ridiculously misplaced. It’s like performing a minuet after covering a third-and-two from your own 37.
Credit to Carr for being true to himself, which is to say blissfully unaware of his contemporary surroundings and happily stranded in a 1987 of the mind. Despite playing his entire career in vibrant entertainment towns—Oakland, Las Vegas, and now New Orleans—Carr is celebrating the Saints' energetic start in the most dated and defiantly off-the-rack form imaginable. Even if you want to give Michael Jackson a pass here for past services rendered (your own musical mileage may vary), Carr stole his crotch grab from the eminently superior former Bill, Seahawk and Raider Marshawn Lynch, which is not only the most atonal form of cultural copyright infringement but almost as dated a reference. Jackson is dead, and Lynch is a character actor, neither is what you’d call cutting edge.
Still, it would be a neat departure from form for Troy Vincent, the commissioner for stuff that Roger Goodell cannot be bothered with, to say simply, "Michael Jackson. He stole a move from Michael Jackson. If we could take his entire game check away, we'd be fully justified. Derek Carr spends enough time looking at video for his day job, he can certainly spend a few minutes on TikTok and come up with something that doesn't make us look quite like the old fuds we are."
Now Vincent won't do that, of course, because this is the NFL, but this would be a better explanation of the league's financial confiscation policy—the No-Fun provision of the CBA—than "Carr seized his wedding tackle in the least suggestive suggestive gesture since the death of Queen Victoria.” But facts are facts. Carr may have felt hard done by in his time with the Raiders and is just displaying his usual corny exuberance; he claims the offending grab was fulfilling a promise made to his brothers, because he uses the move at family weddings and all and they urged him to bring it out in a game. And it makes sense that he’s feeling himself, given that he is currently on the first team that hasn't seemed dead set on ruining him, or at least hasn’t figured out how to do it yet. But there have to be some entertainment standards even here in America's Charnel House. Besides, if Carr wants to go old school, let him go deep old. At least the Jackson family wouldn't be so embarrassed.
