Photo of Notre Dame football gloves.
Saturday after an incredible pass-catch hook up between Notre Dame quarterback Tommy Rees and T.J. Jones, Jones celebrated by showing off the Irish’s new designer gloves (as shown in the picture on this post).
After doing so, he was flagged for a personal foul penalty, for excessive celebration. What!?! Since when was showing off some sweet looking gloves a party foul? To understand what Jones was doing, look at the picture (although it’s not of Jones). You have to put up both gloves, palms out, and put together the logo which is split in between each glove.
These gloves, made so famous by Mark Ingram and the Alabama Crimson Tide in Ingram’s Heisman Trophy season, are becoming a major trend on college football teams. In line with all the other trends, which began with blue turf (Boise State), throwback uniforms (Texas, among many others), custom different kits (a soccer term referring to Oregon’s 20+ uniforms), and finally to gloves (Alabama, most recently Notre Dame).
If a referee of any kind, or an NCAA official happens to read this, please let me know why this is a penalty, which in turn helped Michigan State get good field position on its next possession Saturday.
All Jones did was market the Notre Dame logo in that instance. There was nothing even slightly related to anything the Miami Hurricans of the 1980s were so harshly criticized for doing. Jones didn’t take his helmet off, he didn’t spike a ball, he didn’t motion as if he was pulling his pants down to moon the fans.
When did this become a foul legitimately worth 15 yards, added on during the ensuing kickoff? Maybe the NCAA should lighten up. I happen to adore these gloves, and all the aforementioned trends. The college football landscape is becoming more fashionable, and they should get used to it.
1 comment
Kelley Cook September 20, 2011 7:56 pm
From today’s presser
Upon further review: It turns it out it wasn’t supposed to be penalty!
Q. Off topic, did you ever get a clarification on T.J.’s penalty?
COACH KELLY: We did. We got a clarification that that, in fact, is not a penalty. That was clarified yesterday by the Big 10 officials. Now, if he does that and puts it in somebody’s face or jumps into the Michigan State band, then that would be an unsportsman-like penalty.
Q. But he’ll take the 18 touchdowns if he jumps through the band that came along with that, right?
COACH KELLY: I don’t know about the net result, though. (Laughter.)
Q. Just to follow up on that, does the NCAA or the referees come in before the season and sit down exactly like…
COACH KELLY: Yes.
Q. And they make it clear…
COACH KELLY: Yes. We went over this. We literally went over this specifically, because our gloves have the Fighting Irish on the inside. So when you put your gloves together, the fighting Irishman is on the inside of the gloves.
So that’s my job immediately, because I saw that. That’s like giving your eight year old a lighter, you know what I mean? I knew this thing was going to be something that we were going to have to deal with.
Certainly we brought it up and got the green light, so there was miscommunication along the way.