When Amon Ra St. Brown scored a second-quarter touchdown today against the New York Jets, he did not simply drop the ball in the end zone and walk off the field without acknowledging any teammates, the crowd, or anyone else. But he should have. The National Football League has fined him nearly $60,000 for four incidences of rampant fun-having (miming smoking) in the Lions' 41-31 Week 2 loss to the Buffalo Bills, so he should deprive the league of that amount of fun in the future.
Childish? You betcha. Then again, what better time to be snippy with the bosses than game day? You want bland? We'll give you bland. In fact every touchdown today and tomorrow night should be anti-celebrated the same way, just as a way to tell the owners to buy larger undergarments so there isn't much chafing and binding to ruin their days.
We assume this is an ownership thing, since the owners are the ones who typically decide when touchdown celebrations get too, well, what, exactly? Choreographed? Whimsical? Lurid? Evocative of historical massacres? Disturbing to the youth of America? But even if they're in the clear this time, someone in the league office has decided the players' gift for the terpsichore of muse must be restricted lest the nation become morally compromised any more than it already is as a matter of everyday commerce.
But wait, there's more. San Francisco's Kyle Juszczyk was dinged $14,926, the mandated fine for under-appropriate whimsy, for pretending to drink the contents of a football. Indianapolis center Matt Goncalves got dunned for $8,847 for pretending to pop the top off a football, presumably with the same idea in mind. And Cincinnati's Tee Higgins (four times) and Ja'Marr Chase (twice) were fined as well, for allegedly going phallic after a touchdown, although they claim it was merely a version of The People's Elbow, made famous by Dwayne Johnson in his wrestling days.
Everyone has appealed. In Juszczyk's case it could be a reasonable one, given that he is claiming it was actually a salute to his nickname, Juice, and the appeal will be held Tuesday after everyone has gotten over the emotional ravages of Titans-Giants. He may be optimistic. We of course are not. This was a big week for the NFL to go schoolmarming, and surely the $173,033 in fines it intends to collect will keep the league from going under. That is apparently money the league doesn't need from Jed York for being a scamp.
But there's another possibility for all this high-dudgeon posery, and that is that the league is simply falling in lockstep with the White House's on-again, off-again war on Canada, a curious dynamic based entirely on the president having the attention span of a fruit fly. Seems like a stretch? Hah! You know nothing of our work.
We take you back to 2018 and the now legendary season-ending Canadian Football League game between the Ottawa RedBlacks and Toronto Argonauts, which the RedBlacks won handily, 24-9. You probably bet the game, is how you remember. But for us agnostics, the highlight came on Ottawa's final score, in which lineman Jon Gott, who did not score the touchdown, ran to the stands, took a beer from his girlfriend, downed the contents more or less (there was some facial spillage, as one would expect given that Gott was wearing his helmet as well as a beard you could hide a marmoset in) and then crushed the can against his helmet. Gott wasn't punished, but the league issued a (yawn) stiff admonition that it would not be permitted going forward. Canadians being the acquiescent sorts they are when it doesn't involve being bullied by Turniphead, they have not reprised the moment, even as an homage to Gott's improvisational skills.
These are days in which the workers must be punished for not having the initiative required to have been born to rich people, and their only way to shove back is to treat a touchdown like the unimportant achievement it truly is in the greater scheme. St. Brown, Higgins, Chase, Juszczyk, and Goncalves were guilty of misdemeanor joy, and should as a matter of principle withhold said joy in the future, until the league and its owners stop pretending to take the moral high ground on anything. And when we say "until they stop," we of course mean "until forever."
