NFL: Personal Foul Snow Angel

Wes Welker isn’t one to be known for constant violations of the rules of professional football.  But when the New England Patriots Pro Bowl wide receiver caught a touchdown Sunday afternoon in a snowy battle with the Arizona Cardinals. He decided to take advantage of the coated over end zone and make a snow angel.

The Gesture got a rousing ovation by the home crowd at Gillette Stadium. But it also got him a personal foul that resulted in the patriots giving up 15 yards during the following kickoff in what the NFL calls “unsportsmanlike conduct”.   In some cases the refs wont even let players jump up and down.   

This is to me the straw that broke the horse’s back.  The NFL has gone too far with these rules that pretty much kill a lot of the fun out of a game that can seriously hurt anyone any minute.  Give me a break NFL you guys up in the offices making the rules obviously never got hit by a three hundred pound man.  Every single player that has been given the ball potentially can get hit or grabbed by up to 11 other people. And most of the players in the National Football League are strong enough to break a normal person in half. 

I am by no means saying that players can and should bust out into an 11 person country line dance for crossing the goal line. I’m saying anyone talented enough to run or catch for a touchdown, cause a fumble, sack the quarterback block a kick or tackle someone for a loss of yards is entitled to use the ball as a funny prop, jump up and down, sign the ball and give it to some kid, pose for the cameras and even make snow angels. If the player is stupid enough to stretch it out for most of the forty five second play clock then they deserve the delay of game penalty.  Some players have yet to score a touchdown in their career and i believe they have even more a reason to celebrate with the ball or ground in any way they want.   

You people forget that its the fans that make your league possible. So if some player wants to make themselves look like an ass on national Television by giving the football CPR like Chad Johnson of the Cincinnati Bengals, it should be his prerogative. And if that player does indeed make an ass out himself let us the fans laugh at him so much that he will be too embarrassed to try that again.

If you think celebrations like these are responsible for making the game longer then it should be. I would Like to point your attention to the four to ten commercials that your league has between possessions. Most of them are the same commercials we have to see twenty times before the game goes final. But that’s just my opinion and a topic for another article.