Showboating Rule Had No Prayer Of Being Perfect

NCAA member schools have received their instructions. The directives not only arrived on campus in written form, but also on videocassette. So even if a student-athlete is as thick as a brick, he will know what is expected of him on the football field this season.

And what is expected is this: If he is fortunate enough to score a touchdown, he should divest himself of the football as quickly and as politely as possible, and then proceed from the end zone in an orderly manner.

There is to be no booty shaking, moonwalking, knee knocking, head bobbing, finger pointing or tongue wiggling. He is not allowed to attempt to communicate with the opposition, the fans, Keith Jackson, the officials, the TV cameras or the ghost of Knute Rockne.

He and his teammates cannot form a dance line, human pyramid, prayer circle, choral group or ballet ensemble. Needless to say, the Ickey Shuffle is a no-no. There will be no spiking the ball. Nor will there be any tossing the ball in the air.

“Virtually nothing is allowed,” noted Mark Dienhart, men’s athlete director at the University of Minnesota.

This is excellent. Next thing you know, sportsmanship will be back in vogue. If only the National Football League would adopt a similar position, we wouldn’t have to watch blubbery linemen walking like an Egyptian after putting a late hit on a quarterback.

Some of these rules have been on the NCAA’s books for years; others are brand new. The point is that the officials have been commanded to enforce them strictly. Probably because of the taunting antics of the Miami Hurricanes, whose team picture inevitably winds up on a postoffice wall.

So it all seems like a commonsense, positive approach, right? Well, we’ve already had a lawsuit. And the NCAA already has taken a step backward.

Part of the NCAA’s original announced plan was to penalize any player who knelt in prayer in the end zone after a touchdown. It was going to be a 15-yard infraction, just like any taunting or gloating.

But the Rev. Jerry Falwell - yes, he’s still around - was furious that the players at Liberty University, his Virginia-base Baptist school, wouldn’t be able to give proper thanks after each score. This being America, he filed suit last week.

On Friday, the NCAA backpedaled. It said it is OK to kneel in prayer after a touchdown, as long as players “don’t overdo it.” Which means, I suppose, they can’t break out the rosary beads, speak in tongues or, in the case of some of the more mysterious religions, slaughter a chicken right there under the goalposts.

Furthermore, game officials now are on the spot to decide whether a player who kneels to pray is doing so spontaneously, which is permitted, or if he is posing for the cameras, which is not. Don’t ask me how they decide.

I’ve said it before: Praying in the end zone seems sacrilegious. How selfish and condescending is it to give thanks for a touchdown, which always has to come at someone else’s expense?

When Dienhart was coaching at the University of St. Thomas, he had a problem with that concept, too.

“When I’d see one of our players kneeling in the end zone,” he said, “I’d take him aside and say: ‘God isn’t doing anything for St. Thomas at the expense of Augsburg or Macalester. He isn’t going to align himself with us just to make us happy.”’

Overall, the NCAA seems to be on to something here. Let’s just hope the tap-dancing society doesn’t file suit to ensure that players are allowed to flutter across the field in unison after a score.