The league is taking its annual Labor Day Weekend break from games to allow coaching staffs to work with their newly-reduced 53 player rosters and prepare for the regular season openers.
This annual Labor Day bye weekend also allows college football to take center stage for its full schedule of opening games that includes several national telecasts.
When the NFL regular season kicks off on Thursday, September 4, there will be a new emphasis by the league and its clubs on sportsmanship and the elimination of players performing sexual gestures and other taunts during games.
“Our taunting was up about 55 per cent last year,” says Walt Anderson, a former longtime NFL referee and now a key member of the league’s officiating department in New York. “Unsportsmanlike gestures—whether they were simulating shooting or brandishing a gun or other inappropriate gestures like a throat slash or unfortunate sexual gestures—those were up about 133 percent last season. It’s just one of the areas that the league wants to work actively on. There are plenty of other ways for players to be able to celebrate. We want the focus on those and not on the inappropriate ones.”
We at NFL Alumni endorse the league’s actions to greatly reduce or eliminate taunting and unsportsmanlike gestures. We often hear from many of our brothers who are coaching and/or volunteering on the youth and high school level. Young players often want to emulate the inappropriate actions of NFL players they see on television each weekend.
We believe today’s NFL players have a responsibility to set a good example for the next generation of athletes just as we did for them when we wore NFL uniforms.
Hope you enjoy the Labor Day Weekend holiday!
