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Ryan McGee, ESPN Senior Writer
“The Do The Flop Guy loves to dance
But he couldn’t do it right no matter how hard he tried
He has two left feet due to an accident at birth
And every time he dances, he always flops face first
Then one day when he jumped in the air
They all turned and looked and pointed and stared
He had a bright idea, before he hit the floor
He yelled: “Everybody’s a failure!”
A new dance craze is born!
Do, do, do flop!
Do, do, do flop!
They’re all doing flops!”
“Everybody’s Doing a Flop” — LilDeuceDeuce
Alonza Barnett III didn’t try to break the internet over Labor Day weekend. The James Madison quarterback is trying to convince everyone that he has broken something – Arm? Sternum? Spirit? Who cares? — in the Dukes’ season opener against Charlotte. Any breaks he could have taken to draw an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on the 49ers quarterback who had just given him a two-hander to the chest.
Yes, there are flags in play. And yes, first, it was thrown by the center referee who saw Barnett fall to the ground, thrown in the direction of Niners defensive lineman Dre Butler, who pushed him. Then there are two flags in play, as another yellow is shown to the pushee: JMU’s No. 14 and the new No. 1 thespian. Why?
“I think maybe one play and one little thing will be good,” JMU head coach Bob Chesney said his fall signal-caller.
Well, Barnett did more than that.
JMU QB Alonza Barnett III with an early season setback 😅 pic.twitter.com/SoRTkCBWHH
– ESPN College Football (@ESPNCFB) September 1, 2024
The clip has more than 10 million views on the ESPN College Football X account alone. Barnett said her phone went wild and stayed that way for days, as friends and strangers kept tagging her in reposts and kept texting her about it, as if they hadn’t noticed. When he went to his mid-week presentation speech class, the professor threw the clip on the classroom video screen as an example of unnecessary presentational speech.
Barnett told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that’s when he realized: “Oh man. This is going to stick for a while.”
So, it seems, it’s flopping. Every weekend of this fledgling 2024 college football season produces at least one social media sensation about failure, whether it’s drawing a flag against an opponent or slowing that same opponent down during this era of hammer offenses.
0:36
‘It was a bad move’: UNLV player appears to fake injury before 3rd-down play
Antonio Doyle Jr. appeared to fake an injury and got the right back up before a third-down play vs. Kansas.
The latter is still relatively new; it was only a year ago that the NCAA implemented a review and appeal of rules designed to curb choreographed collapse by perfectly healthy, young athletes seeking nothing more than to stop the clock and disrupt the rhythm of the fast-moving march to the end zone.
“It’s an integrity issue,” said Steve Shaw, the NCAA’s coordinator of national officials. He said the regulatory review has certainly lowered the bog-he-down fabricated fall, but they are still far to eliminate. “It’s not the kind of lesson that we want from this sport that we all love. Even if it looks funny, the motivation behind it, certainly in this case, it’s not. The process is new and it may be difficult to do, but the effort now has to be done.
Everyone hates that stuff. Everybody. Even those who already have players do it. See: Kiffin, Lane.
“There have to be some consequences,” said the Ole Miss coach, who has made a career out of the technique of a powerful offense.
Although he called for discipline, Kiffin acknowledged that some players diving the same way have bothered him over the years.
“We have the opportunity to review the film now and appeal for review from the conference,” Kiffin said. “If the coach is really willing to do it and it’s really implemented and it’s decided that it’s a clear injury, then there’s a real punishment or fine, I can guarantee you it will disappear as it seems.”
The former — the OG plop, which has no time itself, which consciously collapses in search of action one way to the agreeable flag — has been around as long as the leather oblong ball has been carried up and down the soccer field. Or a soccer ball has been kicked down the field. Or as long as LeBron James has been playing hoops.
Flopping, as a verb, formally means “to fall or drop suddenly, especially with a sound; drop or turn with a sudden or thud (The puppy plopped down on the couch.)” But a deep dive into the bottom half of Dictionary.com’s “failure” page reveals a sports meaning, found as the fifth repetition of the word: “An exaggerated or dramatic fall intended to persuade officials to punish the opposing team for a mistake. . (The ridiculously oversold failure didn’t fool the umpire.)”
Even the dictionary does not fall for faux Fall? So, why continue?
He hit the griddy after the flag 😂
FSU’s TJ Ferguson received an unnecessary roughness penalty on this play. pic.twitter.com/bSjK90TwfR
– ESPN College Football (@ESPNCFB) September 3, 2024
“Why don’t you want to?” answered Roman Harper, former Alabama All-SEC safety-turned-Super Bowl champion SEC Network analyst. Standing in the Gainesville, Florida, airport and watching Barnett fail for the first time, he couldn’t stop laughing. Then he couldn’t stop criticizing.
“Those who want to focus on failure, and they should. But the issue is that the defensive lineman let himself get sucked into that shove,” said Harper. “That’s the right talent, to get someone to do it. It’s probably the second hit of the altercation and it happened just as the ref was looking. The QB did his job. That’s done. Then he did too much after. too much.”
How much is too much? Let’s go to an expert not in the field, but in a related field of expertise.
Ricky Morton, WWE Hall of Famer as one half of the legendary Rock ‘n’ Roll Express tag team, became great at selling pain to the audience that became known through the industry as “play Ricky Morton.” Her text: “The flop is 10/10.”
Well, maybe for Starrcade or the Great American Bash. But what about football? Let’s take it for someone who knows both: Brock Anderson, former high school linebacker coveted, East Carolina Pirate, Major League Wrestling star and another son of WWE Hall of Famer in Arn Anderson. “It’s gratuitous even by the standards of professional wrestling. If he just jerked the bump directly from the shove, he would have received a 15-yard penalty and maybe (get) him ejected, which would have been diabolical,” he said.
But then, as any wrestler will tell you, the supporting cast can either lift you up or sink you. “After their lineman got CPR, they should have offset the penalty.”
And that’s it.
For those of you who have never spent time in a unitard on top of a stretched canvas or attached to a paycheck every Sunday, the snap is the chef’s kiss from the rasslin’, suddenly quickly returning to the shoulders with just enough bent legs in the air to convince the viewer that one clearly has just unwittingly chopped down like a sequoia.
“That’s the key, right there. Landing on the flesh of the upper back, between the shoulders, then the butt hits the ground…”
This explanation/addition/coaching is not from a football player or wrestler. No, he was really tough. This is Jane Austin, co-founder of Hollywood Stunt Works, a stunt coordinator and performer with a list of credits spanning more than four decades, from 1980s TV staples “Airwolf” and “China Beach” to “Thor: Love and Thunder” and the sequel “Avatar “.
Remember “Terry Tate: Office Linebacker,” aka the greatest football-themed TV ad campaign of all time? Remember the woman who cleaned her clock while standing in the office hallway holding a pile of files? It was Austin, and he had a concussion. So, yes, he knows how to sell a staged football hit.
After receiving JMU’s Barnett video, Austin waited 24 hours to review the timing. After he had finished laughing, he did a nuanced breakdown of Ponggawa’s suffering.
“My coaching advice is, go down hard,” Austin said. “Get down as hard as you can, and don’t do anything dramatic. Sit there. Then beat it. Or, if you have to move, roll to your side. Stay down, it doesn’t matter, if you really want to take advantage and try to get flag out of it You have to give the audience, in this case the referee, a moment to think, ‘Oh man, that’s terrible.’ So, all these other things, jump up, the second roller, the lineman gives CPR, in business I compare this to falling stairs, where you have a landing on the stairs You do all these actions and when you get to the landing, your momentum ends, but you have to make yourself down the rest of the stairs, right and down yes, do not stop at the landing, stay on the ground.
When Austin is asked about the finer points of taking a fake punch, sometimes a swing from a fellow actor who never gets within 4 or 5 inches of his face, he mentions “John Wick,” “Indiana Jones” and watching fake war movies. the same way football players watch game film. They say body reactions are more important than facial expressions, which suggests when you wear a helmet. And about exaggerated body movements, but not too fast movements. However, he explained, the amazing stunt performers move more slowly than in real combat. And one should always know where the camera is. Or, in this case, people wearing black and white stripes with flutes around their necks and yellow flags around their belts.
Honestly, it sounds like a lot. It seems very difficult to master. So, Austin – who just spent the summer dangerously on a plane somewhere above Pandora – how in the wide, wide world of flops is a classically untrained college football player who should be able to do the pratfall that draws the biggest penalty . easy?
The same way anyone goes to Carnegie Hall. Or the College Football Playoffs.
“Practice, practice, practice,” he said chuckling, but also kind of serious. “Film yourself, like football practice, or look in the mirror. Take a crash pad or mattress, some pillows from the couch, and ask someone to push you over and over again. . Find out what looks the best suit.”
In other words, watch the people of Austin. Watch people Morton. Watch Anderson. With some proper training, maybe we could see Barnett walk from the red carpet of the Armed Forces Bowl to the Emmys, Oscars or Golden Globes to accept an acting award. Hey, football guys have been teaching Hollywood people how to properly throw and catch passes since Harold Lloyd starred in “The Freshman” in 1925. Is it time to flip — and flop — the script?
“Who knows?” Austin said. “Maybe if I get tired of hitting things for a living, there’s a future for me as a soccer failure coach. They need it.”
