Say a team scores a touchdown and a player is flagged for excessive celebration.
The touchdown is later overturned, though. Does the excessive celebration penalty still stand?
*Should *it stand, in your opinion?
I don’t know for sure if it will stand, but it should. It’s just a specifically named unsportsmanlike conduct penalty.
I don’t see any reason it wouldn’t stand. It’s part of the taunting rule, there doesn’t have to be any basis for the celebration.
If anything, the touchdown being overturned would make the celebration even more excessive.
Does it? Yes - celebration is celebration. The same goes for “celebrating,” say, a sack that’s overturned for defensive holding. The point of the rule is to prevent showboating or bringing “excessive” attention to a particular player.
Should it? Yes - and I support the NCAA going back to the original rule where if the ball carrier starts celebrating (e.g. by high-stepping when there are no defensive players near him) before getting into the end zone, the penalty is enforced from the spot of the foul and the touchdown is called back. (For a few years, the rule was, any unsportsmanlike conduct penalty was penalized after the play ended.)
Good point. The penalty should be increased if the TD is overturned.
I think the excessive celebration penalty is usually really, really dumb (which helped lead to the moniker of No Fun League for the NFL - I think it should exist for celebrations which take an extraordinary amount of time for instance), but if you are going to penalize for it, then it should stand regardless of the TD being given.
It does stand, the question then becomes how does it get assessed. I THINK instead of getting assessed on the kickoff and the TD stood, now that the TDs been overturned, its a walk-back from the original line of scrimmage.
But excessive celebration is a dead ball foul - I think how it’s assessed depends on why the TD was overturned. If there was offensive holding or something like that, it would be from the original LOS, assuming the defense took the unsportsmanlike and not the holding penalty. Same thing if a receiver came down with one foot out of bounds - original LOS. But if it turned out that his knee touched the ground on the 1 ft. line, or he stepped out of bounds at the 5 yard line, they’d probably assess it from there, since that’s where the play ended.
Hey, the NFL finally put their rulebook online.
So here’s the relevant parts of the rules:
Section 3. UNSPORTSMANLIKE CONDUCT
ARTICLE 1. PROHIBITED ACTS
…
(d) Prolonged or excessive celebrations or demonstrations by an individual player. Players are prohibited from engaging in
any celebrations or demonstrations while on the ground. A celebration or demonstration shall be deemed excessive or
prolonged if a player continues to celebrate or demonstrate after a warning from an official.
(e) Two or more players engaging in prolonged, excessive, premeditated, or choreographed celebrations or demonstrations.
…
Penalty: (for (a) through (i)): Loss of 15 yards from the succeeding spot or whatever spot the Referee, after consulting
with the crew, deems equitable. If the foul is by the defense, it is also an automatic first down.
And the definition of “succeeding spot”:
ARTICLE 3. SPOTS OF ENFORCEMENT. The Spot of Enforcement is the spot at which a penalty is enforced. Six such
spots are commonly used:
…
(e) The Succeeding Spot: The spot at which the ball will next be put in play (i.e., the spot of the ball after enforcement for a
foul, or, if there has been no foul, the spot at which the ball became dead.)
So it sounds like the 15 yd penalty would apply from wherever the ball would have been placed after the TD was overturned, if there had been no penalty. So 15 yards from line of scrimmage if it turned out to have been an incomplete pass, or 15 yd. from the new spot if the ball turned out to have been dead before the TD occurred.
I agree with posts 2, 4 and 6. 