Football Touchdown Dances: A Sudden Violent Change

-- By LisaMiller - 27 Nov 2024

Brief History of Football Touchdown Dances

In a world of dumb, sometimes terrifying Internet trends that fame-thirsty users participate in for their five-seconds-of-fame, we are on the precipice of another potentially life-threatening craze. Elmo Wright is believed to be the first football player to celebrate a touchdown with an “end zone dance” in 1969. Since then, an extensively documented history of touchdown celebrations shows iconic dances ingrained in mainstream culture. These dances include wholesome, iconic moves like the funky chicken and recent dances like the griddy. However, this pillar of touchdown culture also boasts a sordid past of violent, sexual, and haughty dance moves that have led to serious fines? . Usually, this means mimicking finger guns and bow and arrows, but this year the dances have taken an egregious turn into mimicking brandishing weapons and firing machine guns with two hands.

Justin Walley, a 22-year-old player for the Minnesota Golden Gophers, was flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct after simulating brandishing a weapon by pulling up his jersey to show off an imaginary gun. Drake London, a 23-year-old wide receiver for the Atlanta Falcons, was fined $14,069 for mimicking firing a gun into the crowd. Commenting on London’s act, the Falcon’s head coach Raheem Morris said, “He was probably shooting t-shirts into the stands, because he’s just that kind of guy, but he was excited. He got excited.” London also apologized for his unsportsmanlike conduct and he lost himself in the moment, but neither acknowledged why that movement is used to exhibit excitement. In this essay, I will explore the recent phenomenon of football touchdown celebration dances becoming excessively violent, both the possible causation and effects of this trend, particularly on young boys.

The No Fun League

Perhaps the most horrifying part of all of this is the varied reactions to this overt display of violence. One video on TikTok? with almost 600,000 views shows a man reviewing these instances and states that the brandishing a weapon call is “one of the funniest penalty calls” and that it was an “awesome celebration.” He asks where we draw the line because mimicking a gun for a few seconds is not enough for such a harsh penalty. But there are videos like this one which makes a fascinating correlation between assault weapons manufacturing drastically increasing at the same time these players were born and the important distinction of the two-handed mimicking of a weapon vs. previous celebrations of one-handed weapons.

The NFL has earned the moniker “No Fun League” for its (apparently) excessive fines and penalties. Seattle Seahawks Richard Sherman once said, “The league isn’t fun anymore…This isn’t politics. This isn’t justice. This is entertainment. And they’re no longer allowing the players to entertain. They’re no longer allowing the players to show any kind of personality, any kind of uniqueness, any individuality…” These charts published by ESPN show the increase in unsportsmanlike penalties and fines.

An association of the No Fun League and this new assault rifle trend could lead people to think the NFL is once again trying to stifle the entertainment factor of football. A negative public perception of the referees attempting to stop these “celebrations” could have the opposite intended effect and cause fans, especially impressionable young boys, revering the players and attempting to mimic that in their own lives with imaginary or real weapons. Although this might seem like a drastic jump in logic, the rise in school shootings, violence against women, and an unpredictable gun-loving president-elect present a dangerous future when coupled with these casual acts of violence in football. We should not accept “I got excited” as an acceptable apology for firing an assault weapon into the crowd because that subconsciously approves the correlation between excitement and violence in the viewer's minds.

The Chicken or the Egg: Internet’s Impact on Normalizing Violence

The fame and coolness factor of these football players further normalize and encourage young people to integrate such violent rhetoric into their everyday lives. Popular video games like Call of Duty already depict gruesomeness with the objective of killing as many people as possible. American media has put the war field onto young boys’ screens, inundating them with images that should be reserved for soldiers in combat. Football dances are not the first instance, but perhaps the most important example of alarming behavior in the mainstream. This could be a signal that this violent rhetoric has reached a point of no return. It no longer lies in wait underground for people in chat rooms and encrypted servers, but instead in front of millions of people on Monday Night Football. Is it these football dances that show a potential for more violence, or how has that seed been planted so deep already, that the football dances are now a tangible result that has finally reached the mainstream? These dances tell audiences that an instant display of violence is an appropriate response, whether out of excitement or hatred. The diminishing “wow” factor of an assault weapon is a dangerous concept because it strips the fear that should be associated with it.

The lack of accountability by football players and coaches for such appalling behavior threatens lives. Children’s mortality rates have seen an uptick after having been in a steady decline for decades and the cause is mostly attributable to firearms. This violent rhetoric has permeated every facet of American culture–and this is just what we are seeing on TV. Parents can only monitor their children so much and there will always be sneaky behavior that they won’t see. The real issue is the societal obsession and attitude towards guns. We’ve come a long way from Wright’s high step dance, and while football players are not the root cause of a weapon-crazed society, this assault-rifle phenomenon serves as a temperature check and threatening foreshadowing of what may come if America does not seriously address its gun culture.

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