There’s too much fun in ‘fun and games’

Two moves yesterday underscore the aversion corporate sports has to personality.

The NFL, for one, has banned the practice of “dunking” a football over the goalposts after a touchdown, which should settle down the cacophony that the league was spending too much time trying to keep its players from destroying their brains and not enough time preventing dunking footballs over goalposts in a show of exuberance.

“We grandfathered in some, the Lambeau Leap and things like that. But dunking will come out,” NFL vice president of officiating Dean Blandino said. “Using the ball as a prop or any object as a prop, whether that’s the goal post, the crossbar, that will come out and that will be a foul next season.”

Michael Hurley, of Boston’s WBZ, opines that the league might consider getting control of the number of criminals in it:

You’ve got Kenny Britt, a man who’s been arrested more than a half-dozen times in his brief five-year career, being wined and dined at facilities around the country as the free agent apple of many GMs’ eyes. You’ve got this awesome list from last June, which listed 27 NFL players arrested in the five-month span that preceded its release. And now you’ve even got an owner in the mix, with Jim Irsay getting arrested for driving while intoxicated. But hey, he’s not as bad as those players, right?

Maybe instead of demonizing the criminals, we should be asking how they got that way and what led them to commit crime. Clearly, the NFL wants to foster a non-violent, non-aggressive environment and obviously, that effort begins with a ban on goalpost dunks.

They’re cracking down on fun even in the more genteel world of baseball.

This walk-up music stuff? It’s got to go.

Major League Baseball is instituting a new rule this season limiting walk-up music to 15 seconds.

This is a big deal in Boston where Shane Victorino’s “Three Little Birds” walk-up music has become iconic. Look what happened at a New England Patriots game last year when the scoreboard showed Victorino in the audience.

That’s nowhere near as obnoxious as the Lambeau Leap.

(h/t: Paul Tosto)