In light of the recent controversial penalties for excessive celebration, Dan Patrick interviewed the NFL guy who reviews calls after the fact to see if they were correct. He explained the NFL's rules against excessive celebration, and said that if you go to the ground during your celebration, it is an automatic penalty, unless after you do so, you point up to acknowledge God. He said this several times in all seriousness.

I thought people in the NFL were tough.

What if a close-up reveals that while pointing the player is saying "**** you for making that so hard. That would have been a lot easier if I you hadn't been helping the other team."

I've said this before, but the whole concept of the celebrations post big play or TD (beyind the initial excitement) is ridiculous to me.

Like John Madden says, "Act like you've been there before".

Never a Lions fan, but always loved Barry Sanders. Just doing his job. Get the ball to the end zone, put it down, go back to the bench.

While some of the demonstrations are funny, I prefer that as well. (And I think Paul Brown said that originally.) On the other hand, it strikes me that, while I won't necessarily call it racist, there is something of a trend in the NFL of tamping down excessive displays of Negritude. The Niners had a doo rag controversy some years ago, and they committed the unpardonable sin of not re-signing Deion Sanders after his one-year stint that brought them their last Super Bowl. Yes, he wanted a lot of money, but I think they let him go because he was too showy. Troy Aikman, whose main job always seemed to be to hand off to Emmitt Smith, throw high balls to Michael and get concussions got a big contract while Emmitt Smith had to hold out. And so on. Or so it seems. It would be interesting to see what would happen if some black players justified their post-TD gyrations as old time religious fervor.

On a purely football note, the NFL guy said they don't penalize post-sack celebrations and the like because that would interrupt the flow of the game too much. Give me the most Vegas-choregraphed post-TD celebration over all the ridiculous defensive and special teams coverage posturing any day of the week.