Dancing in NFL this season comes with an added price

"The Sway" has been tethered and "The Sprinkler" shut off. But even the NFL's posse can't crack "The Crunk."

Disorder reigns in professional football these days. The dance floor is spilling onto the field and this does not please the men with ballcaps and clipboards. As the disco ball spun in stadium America and the shoulder pads shimmied, they spent the fall scowling at their playsheets and grumbling into their headsets, itching for the day they could close Club NFL for good.

That day dawned sunny and Florida bright last week. And what a morning it was for order at the owner's meetings in Palm Beach. In a broad swipe, the old boy's club voted to slap a 15-yard penalty on any choreographed, group-organized or outrageous individual celebration or dance.

Then, in an effort to better explain the league's stand on the Riddell Rumba, Mike Pereira, the NFL's director of officiating, showed reporters a film of offending acts that would now be outlawed. Among the worst was "The Sway," the inspiration of former Colt Ricky Williams who had all the members of the kickoff team rock back and forth like palm trees in a hurricane.

According to the Indianapolis Star, the clip of "The Sway" that Pereira showed came just before a kickoff late in a blowout of the Atlanta Falcons.

"I think it's taunting," Pereira told the paper.

When someone pointed out that the Colts actually performed "The Sway" before every kickoff, he was nonplused.

"Then it's offensive," he said. "It's a group demonstration and that's not going to be allowed."

The forces of chaos have apparently run amuck for far too long. The Seahawks drew the league's ire when Bobby Engram introduced "The Sprinkler," last year, to celebrate Seattle touchdowns. He put one hand behind the back of his head and swung his other arm in a wide circle imitating the motion of a clattering lawn sprinkler.

Soon teammates had joined in and the whole thing looked like a drunken dance line from Tuesday Karaoke Night at the Tip Top Lounge. But it was a hit and before long people were doing "The Sprinkler" all over town — in the stands, on street corners, at bar mitzvahs. That is until the NFL got a hint of all the fun. Now the next time "The Sprinkler" touches the lawn of a football stadium, it will be accompanied by a yellow flag.

The Chaos is everywhere, though. And just when the league got everybody wearing their socks at exactly the right height. If it wasn't bad enough that the Colts kickoff team was swinging like bunch of frat boys on a bar hop, Indy's defensive players shimmied to a beat of their own on the sideline. They called it "The Crunk," pulling the phrase from a rap song "Get Crunk Who U Wit," which must have sounded like Uzbekian to the NFL fun censors because they allowed it to stay.

Now this makes everything so confusing. You can't sway or sprinkle but apparently it's fine to crunk? In defending this policy, the league says "The Sway" and "The Sprinkler" are premeditated acts while "The Crunk" appears to be spontaneous and individual even though several Colts defensive players engage in crunk activities.

The league also casts a blind eye to "The Crunk" because it is performed in the designated celebratory areas loosely defined as the sideline. So players are free to crunk away but they don't dare sway or whistles will blow before the first lean to the left.

It should lead to some interesting judgment calls this fall.

Official: "That's a sway. I saw it! Fifteen yards!"

Player: "No, it was a crunk."

Official: "Sway."

Player: "Crunk."

Whistle blows, flag flies.

And what will become of Minnesota's Willie Offord, who strums an air guitar to "Welcome to the Jungle" and "Enter Sandman" before every Vikings kickoff? Is that a crunk or a sway? It is after all an individual act and normally he lines up near the sideline and thus close to the league-mandated celebration zone. But since he air guitars on nearly every kickoff, it's probably premeditated and it could certainly be seen as taunting or excessive.

Who knows, maybe Willie Offord's Slash impersonation could be a test case for decades to come. A football "New York Times vs. Sullivan."

It's all so silly. What is everybody so afraid of?

As it stands I can remember only two plays from the 2002 season — Terrell Owens pulling out a pen and signing the football at Seahawks Stadium and Terrell Owens grabbing a cheerleader's pompoms and dancing after a touchdown at Candlestick Park.

Unfortunately, neither will happen again.

So much for the memories.

Les Carpenter: 206-464-2280 or lcarpenter@seattletimes.com