In the NFL, it used to be the object of the game was to get into the end zone. Now, the object of the game is to get into the end zone and act like a fool.
The end zone has turned into dinner theater, minus the dinner and the theater.
| _____ Monday Morning_____
A look back at the weekend and a look ahead at the coming week's action with a fresh new edge.
• Norman Chad's Couch Slouch
• Starting Lineup
• The Chat: Acting U.S. Park Police Chief Dwight Pettiford
• Two-Minute Drill
• 7 Days
_____ The Quote _____
"He would be the first one to appreciate us all having a beer on his behalf."
-- Quarterback Jake Plummer, on his former Arizona State teammate Pat Tillman, whose number was retired at the school Saturday. Tillman, an Army Ranger, was killed in Afghanistan last spring. _____ The Monday Morning Poll _____
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Not so long ago, after scoring a touchdown, Barry Sanders would hand the ball to an official. These days, after scoring a touchdown, Terrell Owens combines elements of "Anything Goes," Cirque du Soleil and the potato-sack race at the county fair.
Unfortunately, Owens is just one of many offenders. It's as if players cross the goal line and into another dimension. At any given time, the end zone is one part "American Idol" and one part "Fear Factor."
In Sunday's Chiefs-Saints game, after the Saints' Joe Horn scored, he sprinted briefly, pointed, dialed a phone number in the air and bear-hugged the goalpost. By the time he was done, I thought I'd be charged a $10 cover and two-drink minimum.
Bobby Engram's touchdown celebration is so elaborate, I'm surprised he hasn't hired an opening act.
(Of course in the annals of time, there are three infamous, well-chronicled incidents of excessive celebration off the field:
1. When Moses asked for the Red Sea to be parted in 1462 B.C. and it was, he slapped his camel silly and struck a pose.
2. When Albert Einstein formulated the theory of relativity in 1905, he tossed his physics book into the Swiss Alps and shouted, "Boo-yah!"
3. When Robert Peary reached the North Pole in 1909, he stripped down to his skivvies and ripped open five candy wrappers -- coincidentally, this was the advent of the frozen Snickers bar.)
Besides the elaborate song-and-dances, there have been a couple other regrettable growth industries in the end zone -- dunking the football over the crossbar and jumping into the stands.
As an ex-basketball player, the Chiefs' Tony Gonzalez is the dunking poster boy. Tell me this isn't a blueprint on how to get injured. Frankly, it would be safer to pole-vault over the crossbar in a straitjacket and sandals than to extend your body and football over the crossbar in full pads and cleats.
But what do I know? Half the day I'm prone, the other half of the day I'm ordering food into a clown's mouth.
As for jumping into the stands, this emanated from the once-beloved Lambeau Leap. All I can say is -- it seemed like a good idea at the time.
