It's time to move on. It's time for the master thespians of professional football to create some new bit of business to draw attention to themselves and the products they endorse. When the grown-ups start catching on to pop culture, pop culture must reinvent itself or become irrelevant. The modern athlete is more demonstrative and less easily intimidated, the product of a television culture that promotes narcissism and destroys inhibition. All their world's a stage, and all their feats merely serve as the foundation for an image that can be sold to shoe companies.
Every second spent in front of a camera contributes to an athlete's name recognition.
Any gesture that causes a cameraman to maintain his focus beyond the end of a play amounts to free advertising. The Ickey Shuffle was an atrocity, but it became so synonymous with the Cincinnati Bengals' 1988 Super Bowl season that cameramen customarily sprinted to the end zone whenever Ickey Woods scored. Periodically, some player with an ounce of originality will introduce a new step. Neil Smith's sack dance, in which the defensive lineman pretends to hit a home run, was the last real breakthrough in NFL pantomime. Yet even that inspired effort grew tired over time.