Celebrations Will Always Have a Place in Sports

To celebrate or not to celebrate, that is the question. As much as some hate the notion, celebrations will always have a place in sports.

Celebrations in sports have become a contested topic, with sports writers and fans alike arguing both for and against them. Most everyone has an opinion on the topic, whether celebrations are just apart of sports, or that they’re ruining the integrity of the game. Every sport has this issue, but is it actually a problem?

Over the years, players in every sport have had their signature celebrations. Deion Sanders had the “Prime Time” dance. Jamal Anderson had the “Dirty Bird” dance. Shawne Merriman had the “Lights Out” dance. Ickey Woods had the “Ickey Shuffle”, and is still celebrating his cold cuts with it. The premier “diva” wide receivers, guys like Randy Moss, Terrell Owens, and Chad Ochocinco, had a wide variety of celebrations they could pull out at any moment. There was the Dikembe Mutombo finger wag. There’s Rob Gronkowski‘s “Gronk Spike”, which is still a thing of beauty. Edwin Encarnacion has his signature chicken wing home run trot. Even NASCAR driver Carl Edwards celebrates victories with a backflip off his car. No sport is safe from people being happy about their accomplishments.

There will always be reasons to celebrate during a game. A first career catch for an NFL receiver is cause for a small celebration. A first carer base hit for a major leaguer allows time for the player to receive a round of applause from the crowd. An NBA player making the first bucket of his young career should be recognized. Those are inherently celebrated situations. But beyond that, things get a little murky with opinions.

Celebrations should be accepted in the right situations. Certain things that come at certain times just shouldn’t be treated as if they are big time accomplishments. Sacking the backup quarterback in the fourth quarter when your team is down by 25 points is not cause for jubilation. Just ask Chicago Bears’ defensive tackle Lamarr Houston, who tore an ACL celebrating that exact situation in 2014.

A 43-yard field goal with over seven minutes left in the first half is not worthy of a big celebration. Some high-fives and hugs for the long snapper and holder are good, but jumping up and down and fist pumping like you just kicked the game-winner in the Super Bowl is a little much. Then-Arizona Cardinals kicker Bill Gramatica can attest to that, he tore his ACL in 2001 while hot-dogging during that situation.

A base hit to left field in the fifth inning with no one on base? No, that’s not worthy of a bat flip and a show-boaty jog to first base. A three-run home run in the seventh inning of the clinching game of the ALDS to break a 3-3 tie? Yeah, that deserves a pimp job, like the one Toronto Blue Jays’ slugger Jose Bautista did in the 2015 postseason.

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Don’t celebrate a three-point field goal before the ball drops through the net, like Los Angeles Lakers’ guard Nick Young did in 2014. Sure it makes for a great reaction .gif, but they’re laughing at you, Swaggy P, not with you.

There are times when a player should celebrate, when it would seem a little crazy if they didn’t. Scoring your first career touchdown in the NFL during Monday Night Football on a 61-yard bomb is definitely worthy of something. Just don’t be like former Philadelphia Eagles’ wide receiver DeSean Jackson, who was so eager to get into the endzone for the first time that he threw the ball away, just chucked it away behind him, before he even crossed the plane of the goal line. You have got to score the touchdown before you celebrate the touchdown.

A walk-off grand slam is definitely worthy of a celebration with your teammates at home plate. That’s the kind of thing little kids dream of! But if you’re going to jump into home, don’t fracture your leg and miss over 16 months of action like Kendrys Morales did in 2010.

When a team is winning at a near-record pace, like the Carolina Panthers are doing this season, quarterback Cam Newton should be able to do the Dab dance and pretend to rip open his jersey like Superman without a bunch of ESPN analysts discussing him on Monday morning, asking if he’s ruining the integrity of the game. He’s not ruining the integrity of the game, commissioner Roger Goodell is doing that himself, and quite well at that.

But on the other side, don’t be like Cleveland Browns’ quarterback Johnny Manziel. Don’t flash a signature “money sign” when your team is losing by four touchdowns. That leaves an opening for your opponents to mock you with your own signature taunt when they record a sack on you with a 20-point lead. Manziel has since retired the “money sign”, but there’s a whole host of other reasons to not be like Johnny.

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Last October, hockey writer Ken Campbell of The Hockey News wrote this, asking a simple question: “why can’t baseball players be more like hockey players?”. In it, Campbell pondered how a baseball could possibly celebrate winning their division with champagne and beer showers in the locker room. Why couldn’t those baseball players, who play a sport in which 10 teams makes the playoffs, be more like those hockey players, where 16 teams, more than half the league, make the playoffs. Winning the division in baseball, whose season is a marathon at 162 games, just about twice as long as the hockey season, is a big accomplishment, where 25 guys play through the heat of the summer with that goal in mind. Maybe the question should be “why can’t hockey players be more like baseball players?”.

A grandiose display at an inopportune time is just bad form. Carl Edwards isn’t going to do his backflip for finishing 17th at Daytona. He saves it for only the grandest occasions: victories. In the same light, celebrating a sack down 25 points, or pimping a meaningless single only makes the player look foolish and selfish, like that individual accomplishment is much more important than the team. Not only is that sending a bad message to the fans, but it’s sending a bad message to the teammates, the coaching staff, and the front office.

Celebrations in sports should be done, and shouldn’t be looked down upon when they’re done right. Do fans not celebrate when the team they support does something well? Are big home runs late in the game not met with cheers and fist pumps in the living room? Are game-winning touchdowns or field goals not met with yells and high fives all around with the guys? If the fans can celebrate someone else’s accomplishments, then the player should be able to do so for his accomplishments.

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Maybe we all just need to lighten up. Not only with sports celebrations, but with everything. Sports at their very root are meant to be fun. Celebrate that first career hit, that late three-pointer to give your team the lead, or that game-winning field goal as time expires. Let’s start having fun again. It’s okay to have fun.

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