And I find that to be strange, and the attitude of killjoys. It’s an extremely adrenaline-pumped sport where I expect the expression of emotion, and the suppression of such feels artificial and arbitrary to me. I feel like the human instinct is to celebrate – I could be wrong. I grew up with those stoic expectations in school, as part of “sportsmanship” and have always found them nonsense and against what I perceive to be the human spirit. Like I said, I don’t want to watch a bunch of stoic robots playing. This isn’t assembly line drone work.
I’m reminded of that cringy “balling” celebration the Giants did in 2007. Michael Strahan, Osi Umemyiora, Justin Tuck; they would pretend to be shooting a basketball jump shot, usually as a group.
The fact that that’s pretty much 20 years ago just makes me feel old.
You have said you used to be a football fan. Can you explain to us why you were a football fan when you were one?
I like both. Sometimes I like fun celebrations, but I also like when a player acts like it’s no big deal and calmly hands the ball to a referee. I think there’s a place for both attitudes in the sport (just my opinion). I guess I like it when players can be individuals, at least to a degree where it doesn’t start to ruin things. (That last bit will always be subjective.)
I also love stupid things like this (as long as they don’t happen too often).
Reddit: Rams get the Jags to jump offsides and OL Steve Avila celebrates the only way he knows how
It’s just an offside call, but one of the lineman runs ahead, jumps in the air, and clicks his heels together like a leprechaun to celebrate. A big, fat guy doing that. It’s so ridiculous I can’t help but laugh. If that happened every time it would be annoying, but every once in a while, I love it.
Someone mentioned the 85-86 Bears. Sure, the Superbowl Shuffle was stupid, and McMahon was a self-promoting punk. But I don’t seem to recall Dent, Hampton, McMichael, Singletary, Marshall, Payton celebrating the way I saw folk doing during that game. Maybe I misremember. But I sure remember watching that team being PLENTY exciting, without players mugging for the camera after making a play.
You did not enjoy watching Walter Payton? (I forget - were you too young to really appreciate him?)
Sure I could.
Is the entire purpose of this thread to be a circlejerk demonstrating how superior you are to the unwashed masses who enjoy sports?
Specific players might not have celebrated, same as today some players don’t even spike the ball when they score. But players absolutely did celebrate back in those days just as much as they do now.
That was from a 1989 VHS tape showing some touchdown celebrations of the decade. It’s far from a new phenomenon. I think you have something of a revisionist memory.
Not at all. Unsure why you take it that way. (Or even how that qualifies as a “circlejerk…”) Don’t understand the defensiveness.
Pretty sure I acknowledged that some players celebrated back in the 80s. I do not know what resources would allow us to opine whether it currently is greater, less, or the same.
I was responding to puly’s comments on stoicism and what makes for enjoyable viewing. I didn’t watch the vid. But I doubt Payton is featured on it. And I disagree with anyone who says the Bears’ 85 defense was not enjoyable to watch.
I do remember Perry dunking the ball over the crossbar. I seem to remember Hampton and McMichael celebrating a bit, but not to the extent of players today, and not on a “routine” play.
I remember the Bears playing on a game where Madden was the commentator. McMahon threw a touchdown pass and celebrated by head-butting the receiver in the endzone. Madden used the tellestrater showing McMahon running down the field looking for the receiver, Madden going “Where is he? Where is he? Where is he? DOINK!”
From a google AI search. I generally disfavor over reliance on AI responses, but offer this for what it is worth:
Yes, football players celebrate significantly more often and with greater elaboration today compared to 30 years ago
, largely due to a shift in cultural attitudes and the relaxation of NFL rules.
The Evolution of Celebrations
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Then (Early 1990s and earlier): In decades past, the prevailing attitude was to “act like you’ve been there before”. Many players, like Johnny Unitas and Walter Payton, simply handed the ball to the official after scoring, and excessive displays were often discouraged by coaches and seen as poor sportsmanship. While some early celebrations existed (e.g., the “Fun Bunch” group high-fives and the “Ickey Shuffle”), the league introduced a rule against “excessive celebration” in 1984, which led to penalties and fines, generally limiting how much players celebrated.
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Now (Today): Today’s celebrations are often elaborate, choreographed, and considered a form of entertainment and personal branding. The NFL relaxed its strict rules on celebrations in 2017, explicitly allowing more “spontaneous displays of emotion” and group celebrations in response to player and fan interest. This change has led to a proliferation of creative and planned celebrations, some even inspired by social media trends like TikTok dances.
Key Differences
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Frequency: Celebrations are more commonplace for various plays, not just touchdowns, and occur much more frequently throughout the game.
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Choreography: Modern celebrations often involve pre-planned, intricate group choreography, which was explicitly banned under older rules.
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Rules and Fines: Thirty years ago, players faced stiff fines and 15-yard penalties for most forms of “excessive” celebration. Today, penalties are generally only for offensive gestures, prolonged delays of the game, or using the ball/goalposts as a prop in a way that risks damage.
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Cultural Shift: The shift reflects a broader change in sports culture, where personality and entertainment value are highly prized, and players are encouraged to express themselves more freely.
Please explain to us what you found entertaining about watching football when you were a football fan.
I just want to point out that I don’t get the impression that @Dinsdale dislikes sports, just not the modern version of the NFL.
Not sure if there are more ads (would not surprise me) but I do recall reading an article long ago (so sorry, no link) where they used a stop watch to time a football game. They would start the watch when the ball was snapped and stop it when the whistles called a given play over. Rinse and repeat for a whole game.
In a roughly three hour game the ball was in play for…12 minutes.
Obviously that number will vary a bit from game to game but it’s pretty close as an average I would think.
I was never a diehard fan - either of football in general or any particular team. Played quite a bit of touch football - never school/tackle. I stopped being a football fan in the mid 80s. Much of my enjoyment was when I was a kid to my mid-20s. At the time I was young and more constricted in what I perceived as available pastimes.
Watching college football was primarily an excuse to drink heavily. My college’s (Illinois) team consistently sucked - despite consistent cheating. I also had major issues with how big ticket sports are handled in colleges. As a teaching assistant, I had my share of functionally illiterate athletes in my classes. So after graduation, that was the first sport I let go of.
Watching NFL was simply something to do, and something to talk with friends about. At the time I enjoyed the athleticism. Being young and inexperienced, I thrilled at vicious hits, not appreciating how players were getting used up and discarded. I was originally a Vikings fan as a kid, but their Superbowl futility got old. The Bears absolutely sucked up until the mid 80s. The 85 Bears were phenomenal. I also drank quite heavily at the time, and watching football was a handy excuse for drinking.
After mid-80s, I ran pools at work, mainly to keep up my interest. If I did not make an effort to stay up on the teams/players/standings, I had zero interest in watching a game. One reason free agency and such lessened my appreciation of sports. But, after the Bears’ Superbowl win, for whatever reason my focus shifted to being aware of all the time players spent standing around. 30 seconds or whatever in between each 5 seconds of activity. Decided that was not how I wanted to spend my fall Sunday afternoons.
Many of you apparently disagree, but I perceive a difference in how football - and many pro sports - are treated today compared to when I was a kid in the 60s. I do not believe there were 24 hr sports radio/TV, pre- and postgames were less protracted. IIRC, Madden was somewhat of an outlier in terms of his enthusiasm as a commentator. I wonder how he would come across today? I sure don’t recall panels of 3, 4, 5 ex-players/coaches/whomever pontificating on as though they were discussing something much more important than a simple game.
At some point I basically decided I would rather spend my effort on doing something myself, than watching and caring about what someone else did. And if I was going to study up on something, it would be something other than players’ stats and win/loss percentages.
I’m far more interested in PLAYING sports - to the extent my aging body will allow, than watching them. I also think sport - at all levels - gets way too much attention in our society. A discussion we’ve had around here often.
That doesn’t surprise me. That’s like determining how long a boxing match is by using a stopwatch to determine how much time was spent throwing punches, and starting the stopwatch as a punch was thrown, and stopping it as the punch stopped. It would probably be pretty short as well.
You could probably find some metric for many sports that make a long contest seem like a really short amount of “action”. Because the human body can’t engage in that much vigorous activity without needing rest. Robot sports might change all of this, of course (though you might even need to recharge batteries with them).
I get that. I played soccer in high school, and enjoyed playing it a lot more than I enjoy watching it. Not that soccer is boring, but it isn’t nearly as fun to watch as it is to do.
(Though my body is aging too, and there is no way I can play like I did 30 years ago.)
Whereas, a WSJ study found that the average MLB game had about 18 minutes of action.
And you thought that baseball was boring!
You’re right that 24-hour sports radio didn’t debut until the late-80s, and didn’t become national until into the 1990s. Still, there was a lot of sports talk on non-24-hour talk radio back then, just not all sport talk all the time.
You could probably do it for soccer as well, if you stopped the clock for every out of bounds, setting up for a set piece, or just passing the ball around on the defensive half of the field.
Games do take a bit longer, in total elapsed time, than they did decades ago, probably on the order of an additional 10 to 15 minutes or so now than they did 40 or 50 years ago – and, as the “official clock” continues to be sixty minutes long, that increase is, by default, “dead time.” The average length of a regular season game is now around 3:10, whereas it was a smudge under 3 hours when I was a kid.
Additional/longer commercial breaks are undoubtedly part of it, but not all of it. Video replays (both by coach’s challenge, as well as mandated reviews after every scoring play and turnover) can slow things down, and more passing plays (with incomplete passes stopping the clock) likely also play a role.
As has already been noted, the NFL has also made some timing changes to cut down on some of the bloat: restarting the clock on the referee’s signal rather than at the snap in some circumstances, cutting 3 minutes out of halftime, etc.