Here's to you, Brandon Stokley!

If you pay attention to the NFL, you’ve probably seen the highlight. If you haven’t, I’ve included a clip that has it. Brandon Marshall had a glove that was half-black and half-white (or maybe it was red, white, and blue), and he wanted to put it on, and (I guess) re-enact the Black Power salute from the 1968 Olympics, only this time with an “Ebony and Ivory” flavor. Brandon Marshall wanted to celebrate the election of Barack Obama and the coming together of different races to elect him. Or something. I know all this because he was interviewed at least fifty times in the last 24 hours.

I suppose it’s good that he wanted to make an end zone celebration about something bigger than the game of football, rather than about making himself bigger than the game of football. I tend to think that most end zone celebrations are pretty silly, but I don’t think that the league should police them the way they do. They don’t impede the flow of the game, and some of them are just classic (Chris Johnson with the Bongos, T.O. with the Sharpie, Chad Johnson proposing marriage).

But whatever we think of them, the No Fun League takes a dim view of them and has begun to penalize them. Marshall’s confused metaphor would almost certainly have drawn a fine and, more importantly, a 15 yard penalty on the kick off in a game they led by only 4 inside the two-minute warning.

Which brings me to what I wanted to talk about in the first place. Marshall’s celebration never happened, because Brandon Stokely ran over and stopped him (skip to the 30-second mark). I’m sure it was a friendly, if terse, conversation, and Marshall has definitely been expressed his gratitude to Stokely in the 53 interviews I have seen. 

Here’s to you, Brandon Stokley. We need more veterans keeping rookies from doing stupid stuff.