After South Carolina freshman Dylan Stewart simulated firing shotgun blasts at Ole Miss quarterback Jaxson Dart following a sack last week, the celebration was met with harsh criticism.
That included Gamecocks head coach Shane Beamer, who called it “unacceptable” and said Stewart was disciplined internally over it.
“A clearly unintelligent play by Stewart,” play-by-play announcer Dave Pasch said during the ESPN broadcast when it happened.
The incident spoke to a larger concern about big-play celebrations that simulate shootings and gun violence. At the very least, it appears to be the kind of thing that schools, conferences, and broadcasters don’t want to draw attention to or reward in any way. This and other gun-related celebrations in college football and the NFL have been criticized and condemned in recent days.
That’s what made it so strange to see ESPN use an image of Stewart doing his gun-firing celebration as part of a graphic during their halftime show to introduce highlights from the South Carolina-Alabama game on Saturday.
We can probably figure out what happened. ESPN didn’t purposefully choose the image because of the gun celebration. Instead, someone likely wanted to find an image of the talented defensive linebacker and that was one of the first things to pop up. Presumably, they didn’t put two-and-two together and just ran with it.
That said, we would imagine this led to some kind of discussion internally. As far as we could tell, the image was not reused in subsequent highlights packages of the game on ESPN networks.
There’s a lot of room for creative and unique celebrations after successful football plays. But considering the state of gun violence in America (and certain people’s lack of desire to do anything about it), it doesn’t feel like the kind of imagery worth celebrating.
[Athlon Sports, William Cockerill]