Washington cornerback Josh Norman has been fined for miming the shooting of a bow and arrow during a game. He has now joked about a more literal celebration that would highlight the perceived (or actual) double standard regarding the NFL’s position on celebrations.
“I’ll say this,” Norman said this week, via USA Today. “Since they sell beer on TV while kids are watching it, I’m thinking I might open a keg on the field, and I’m going to drink it on the field. And I don’t see that being on the rule book.”
While Norman is right about the absence of any “thou shalt nots” regarding the use of a beer keg in celebrations, there is a general ban regarding the use of props. If, as his teammate Vernon Davis has learned, the ball can be regarded as a prop when simulating a basketball shot through the goalpost, a beer keg would be regarded as a prop, too.
And even if Norman were to opt for cracking a keg on the sidelines in the same way Norman’s nemesis does whatever it is he’s doing with the kicking net, that surely would draw the ire of the NFL. But it also would underscore the inherent hypocrisy regarding the NFL’s insistence that players limit their celebrations because, as Commissioner Roger Goodell said Wednesday, "[o]ur players are role models and others look at that at the youth level, so that’s important for us to hold that standard up, and it’s part of being professional.”
If that’s the case, why does the NFL even have an “official beer”? The $1.4 billion in money-for-nothing that the league will generate through 2022 is the obvious reason. And that money will go a long way toward allowing the powers-that-be to overlook the uncomfortable reality that a full embrace of a brand of beer may cause some at the youth level to think they’re not properly following the sport without their Bose headphones plugged in to a Microsoft Surface while gobbling up Papa John’s pizza and washing it down with a Bud Light.