ORLANDO, Florida. General managers from around the NFL sat through a two-hour video presentation here yesterday as the league's supervisor of officials explained pro football's new limits on excessive endzone celebrations after touchdowns.
"The two words you have to remember are 'tasteful and proportionate'," Mike Pereira said to a roomful of executives who were relieved to be done with an earlier session on "down by contact" calls.
"By tasteful, I mean that which conforms to recognized standards of aesthetic expression," he explained as retiring commissioner Paul Tagliabue stood watching from the back of the meeting room. "No butt-wiggling," he said when a representative of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers asked him to be more specific.
The issue of proportionality will be a judgment call, Pereira indicated. "If Indianapolis is up by three touchdowns with two minutes left, I don't want to see anybody on the Colts doing a St. Vitus Dance if James Mungro scores on a one-yard plunge," he said. "On the other hand, anytime the Arizona Cardinals score you expect them to go a little nuts."
Some present at the meeting said they would seek professional assistance in guiding players through the new rules, which forbid the use of props such as the Sharpie pen Terrell Owens used to autograph a ball after he caught a touchdown pass. "We hired a mime coach--Jean-Claude something-or-other. He's going to show the guys how to work without props," said Cleveland head coach Romeo Crennel.
The New York Giants said they have put Tina Farnsworth of the American Ballet Theatre on retainer to teach players how to express themselves in a tasteful manner. "Tiki Barber is progressing nicely," she said. "I have taught him how to perform leplie, lerond de jambe and lereleve. Now if you will excuse me, I must eat monchef boyardee."
The NFL has been criticized as the "No Fun League" for its crackdown on endzone celebrations, but Tagliabue said the new rules were nothing more than a way to keep advertisers happy. "If we play our cards right, someday a pro football telecast will be as boring as Masterpiece Theatre," he said. "In the case of the Houston Texans, we're already there."
Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer. He is the author of "The Year of the Gerbil: How the Yankees Won (and the Red Sox Lost) the Greatest Pennant Race Ever," a history of the 1978 AL East pennant race, and a number of plays, including "Number One Hockey Mom," "Please, Pope," and "What Mickey Belle Isle Told You," a trilogy about hockey (JAC Publishing). His work is available on Amazon Shorts (at 49 cents a dowload), and he writes on sports for Flak Magazine.
