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Embarrassment
The NFL Is Enforcing New Taunting Penalties
They've known all along how dangerous it is!
Posted September 11, 2016
On Thursday, the Denver Bronco's ‘unveiled’ their new quarterback, Trevor Seimian, while the referees of the game unveiled the NFL’s new, stricter taunting rules.
What may come as a surprise to many (given the cover-up storyline of “Concussion”) is that the NFL has long-realized that taunting is particularly dangerous—and, has had penalties on the books for almost three decades.
I first explored the relationship between the NFL and taunting in 2014, when several high-profile players were humiliated and called to account for personal aggression against their wives and children.
The public shaming by the media made me cringe—not because these men did not sorely need a reckoning, but because the relationship between shame and rage is so well known.
How would athletes, daily trained to be aggressive, respond to public humiliation?
To being stripped of respect, playing time, even jobs?
Hoping there would be no front-page fallout, I began thinking about character indictments, about the (relative in-)ability to negotiate humiliation, about the capacity to reign in the rage often sparked by a loss of face.
And there it was: “taunting penalties.”
Though originally associated with excessive celebration in the end-zone, the NFL long ago recognized the need to curb behaviors that hinted at inadequacy on the part of an opponent. This suggested that the NFL knew something about taunting and shame that the rest of us were just learning.
The NFL has been tightening their rules since the '90s, first adding a 15 yard walk-off, and, by the turn of the century, levying fines against individual players who flaunted ball-skills or in any way derided another player. Shoving the ball at an opponent or spiking it near a defender was considered unsportsmanlike, and any act that baited and/or embarrassed opponents was thought to threaten the integrity of the game (i.e. increase the possibility that regulated competition devolve into a blood-sport).
Team penalties (as opposed to individual fines) made restraint the responsibility of players, teammates, and coaches alike. They encouraged others to intervene and diffuse any situation that threatened to erupt, while pressuring coaches to assume responsibility for more than tackling and ball handling skills.
Despite this failsafe, and the costly fines, there continued to be occasional high-profile incidents. And surprisingly, the league responded with increased penalties, signaling their zero-tolerance position on taunting (even if this was, in part, because the NFL is a multi-million dollar franchise that is heavily invested in their family-friendly reputation).
The point is, the NFL continues to model anti-bullying values—a de-escalation of shaming, and a refusal to tolerate humiliating insinuations of inadequacy—precisely because they are well aware of the consequences of a failure to do so.
Beginning this year, a ‘two strikes you’re out’ policy is in play: ejection from the game for more than one offense.
Along with new helmets to protect against concussions, there are new, stricter penalties to protect against the fallout from behavior that mocks, demeans, and disrespects an opponent.
To protects against behavior that threatens to turn sporting-competitions violent.
Interestingly, this new penalty turns the tables on aggressors, threatening them with rejection, with loss of bonds (friendship, respect, even contractual), and with loss of face (immediately, and publicly stripping them of active-player status).
These are the exact same threats that aggressors levy against their opponents with taunting.
Mocking one or another defender (by publicly suggesting he is inadequate) threatens a loss of face and diminished respect of fans and teammates alike (is he really good enough to belong in the NFL?)
This ‘penalty in kind’ proposes it is the aggressor who is not good enough to continue playing—and perhaps not good enough to remain on an NFL roster.
It is he, though his lack of restraint / respect, who is inadequate.
As is to be expected, high profile enforcement of this rule will again raise the question of whether and how we can translate such penalties to anti-bullying conduct codes in schools and corporations.
How to increasingly “referee” the competitiveness that is the backbone of American culture?
While we can hardly kick our children out of the classroom for similar infractions, it is important to note that the NFL continues to enlist peers (teammates) in reigning in and curbing the excesses of aggression.
Their newest strategy--the threat of (public) loss of status—may well hinge on whether public disapprobation carries over into the locker room.
Are flagrant aggressions penalized off the field as well?
If taunting penalties are reinforced behind closed doors, if team-status and psychological well-being are put on the line by coaches and peers, the initiatives may have positive long-term effects.
Not the least of these might be a new understandings of competition itself.
Claiming that the environment of a corporation or of a school is competitive, and that the lines between aggressively competing and egregiously bullying are blurred, cannot excuse behavior that is no longer tolerated on the grid-iron.
Competition spurs each of us to perform at our highest levels.
It pushes us to push ourselves, even as we push each other.
This striving should not include, or accommodate, behaviors that tear down opponents or diminish their capacities in the name of success.
In looking to enforce such ethics off any playing field, peers must assume greater responsibility.
They must be trained (and coached) to intervene, to break up the escalating tensions; they must be incentivized to report the infraction to authorities; and finally, they must be made aware of the power held in—and able to be exercised by--their disapprobation.
In policing infractions off the field, iPhone videos are no different than instant replays. They “arm” authorities with the right to intervene and/or penalize.
With such ‘proof’ to be had, there is a lessening of the likelihood that a bad judgment call will be made, or that snide violations will be missed (or ignored).
