Like a litter of children pulling and tugging on Daddy’s hair and ear lobes begging for ice cream, we finally got what we wanted: relaxed touchdown celebration rules! How were we possibly watching football games without players acting like peeing dogs? The future of the Now Fun League is here, but what kind of fans would we be if we didn’t take some time to look back at where it all began?
The touchdown celebration starts with Homer Jones, a 6’2, 220 pound track star out of Texas Southern College who was drafted by both the AFL’s Houston Oilers and the NFL’s New York Giants. After choosing his hometown Oilers, a training camp injury sent Jones packing. But the wide receiver, who would later be described as like “throwing to a man riding a motorcycle holding a butterfly net,” wasn’t done, and a second chance with the Giants put him in the right place and the right time to make NFL history.