Steelers/Bengals. The Steelers recover a fumble and return it for a touchdown. They are flagged for illegal celebration in the end zone. After replay review, the recovering defender was down, so no touchdown.
If no touchdown, then there was no celebration. Why the penalty?
It’s a variety of an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty, which always stand.
If someone has a birthday party and later it is discovered that that day was not, in fact, their birthday, does that mean that there was no party? :dubious:
Because it falls under the category of “personal foul”. Think about if under the same circumstances, a player punched another in the head, and then the call was reversed. The punch in the head, not a normal action in the course of the game, still happened and needs to be punished.
But why? After review, the whistle should have blown. We are canceling the touchdown because it was the wrong call. But if not for the touchdown, there would be no celebration. Why enforce that penalty? Yes, they illegally celebrated, but it was also a touchdown. Why cancel the latter, but enforce the former?
Because the cerebration still happened, and improperly celebrating a non-touchdown is equally illegal.
They enforce these rules so other 23 year old knuckleheads will learn that it’s going to cost them $10,000 to act out like that.
Nobody celebrates a non-touchdown. If the touchdown didn’t happen, then the celebration didn’t as well…at least in my kingdom.
Then the Steelers recover a fumble and return it for a touchdown, it was confirmed on replay that it was a fumble and no contact, but the Steelers only get the ball at the point of recovery? Why have fucking replay if it cannot allow the result of the play to stand? I thought officials were supposed to let the play continue in those situations.
Well, it’s not your kingdom, is it? It’s the NFL’s kingdom, and they’ve written the rules. You don’t like it, complain to them.
I can’t complain here? 
I use this board for my complaints so as not to get myself in legal trouble in real life. I see your location. Screw the Bengals.
You’ve been pulled over by the police. Due to an error, the officer tells you your license was suspended and he’s placing you under arrest. You make a run for it, leading the police on a high speed chase.
When the error is discovered, did the chase never happen?
Actually, I’m a Broncos fan, for about 25 years.
Here’s your problem, right here. There was a celebration.
He celebrated. He thought he was celebrating a touchdown. That’s all it takes.
My bolded part above is the flaw in your thinking. Somebody did in fact celebrate a non-touchdown.
Yep and it doesn’t matter if they erroneously believed it to be so.
Let me put it this way: if during the play, one of the Bengals punched and cold cocked a Steelers player and a flag was thrown, but the touchdown was negated, should that Bengals player be excused from the penalty?
Because the whistle was blown. Once the whistle is blown play is supposed to stop. The players that are following the rules don’t try to stop the guy with the ball so he goes to the end zone. Would he have made it to the end zone if the 11 guys from the other team were trying to stop him? As a matter of fact he CAN be penalized for delay of game even though they tend to let that one slide.
No, because a punch is a foul regardless of the context of the play. If I am a player and decide that this touchdown was so important that I will risk 15 yards on the ensuing kick off, then that is one thing. The official signaled touchdown which led me to believe I had the choice of celebrating, get 6 points, kickoff from 20 yard line.
After replay, I get no points, and 15 yards from the spot of recovery. That 15 yards is a different type of 15 yards than one assessed on a kickoff.
Again, if I punch someone, it could be after a good play or bad play; same penalty. If the powers that be now declare that there was no touchdown, then I did not celebrate something that didn’t happen.
This is one of the things I dislike about replay: it makes these sort of retroactive changes to the game only part of the time. The other recovery wasn’t scored a TD even though the whistle blew, right? The defenders only stopped because of the whistle; the Steelers only celebrated because of the TD.
If that was what you would be led to believe, you would be believing a very silly thing. It’s identical to throwing a punch in the way the penalty is assessed. Perform an excessive choreographed celebration after any other kind of play and you can be flagged for that, too. Even though you aren’t being led to believe you’re being presented with some kind of conditional choice based on a touchdown having been scored.
I think you’ll find yourself alone in believing that anyone cares whether or not the player has specifically weighed the importance of the touchdown against the risk of the penalty. There’s a flag for making a scene. If you make a scene, that’s what the flag’s for. It’s a pretty absurd result if you decide that because a player actually stepped out on the one yard line, he’s in the clear for taking off all his clothes and humping the mascot or whatever.