No Fun League Strikes Again with Captain Morgan

During the 3rd quarter of last Sunday nights Dallas Cowboys/Philadelphia Eagles game, Eagles TE Brent Celek scored an 11-yard touchdown, and promptly struck a pose intended to mimic the pose of Captain Morgan on their bottles of tasty spiced rum.

Celek was penalized 15-yards (thanks to teammate Jason Avant), but the league has now come down even harder–for once not fining the player involved, but announcing that any future similar poses would result in “significant” penalties.

The problem, in the league’s eyes, is that they caught wind that Captain Morgan had quietly been trying to encourage players to strike the pose, promising charitable donations made on behalf of the players that struck the pose.

“A company can’t pay a player to somehow promote it’s product on the field,” NFL spokesman Greg Aiello told Yahoo! Sports this week. “Every league has the same rule. … It’s come up before, companies trying to use our games and then players for ambush marketing purposes.”

Of course, in the end, Captain Morgan still is getting plenty of publicity–while Gridiron Greats Assistance Fund, a non-profit which helps retired NFL players with various hardships after leaving the game, will likely now not get some sizable donations that may have been heading their way.

While it makes a certain amount of sense that the NFL wants to limit the kind of celebrations that may be rewarding players–especially if they’re not getting their cut–but one does wonder if it will be a difficult one to police.  After all, what’s to stop a company from making their logo the image of someone spiking a ball, or dumping Gatorade on someone, or some other common celebration that already exists?

And don’t even get me started on the league allowing celebrations in some stadiums that wouldn’t allowed in others…<cough>Lambeau Leap<cough>