Let’s appreciate the young men who instill some theater into our sport.

Flopping makes lots of people very mad, no matter which sport it happens in.

Life is better if you pick your battles, though. There’s no rule that you have to get mad about players pretending things happened that didn’t really happen. You don’t get mad about play action passes, do you? They aren’t real passes! The quarterback is a fraud and a liar!

I realize it’s frustrating to see your team get unfairly flagged, sure. But whenever it happens to anybody else, it seems the most emotionally healthy reaction is to laugh. So let’s try and laugh!

Qaadir Sheppard, Ole Miss

Does this remind you of anything?

Because it looks exactly like The Rock selling a Stone Cold Stunner to me.

See? Flopping isn’t so bad. In wrestling, being able to make your opponent look really tough and mean is an important skill. Sheppard made Arkansas look really tough and mean.

And now he wants his hardware:

Johnny Adams, Michigan State

An example of a more subdued effort.

Seemingly faked injuries: always a tricky topic

Fans immediately lose their minds whenever their team is moving the ball but gets interrupted by an unusual number of defenders on the ground between plays. Using injury delays intentionally to stall an offense has happened before, of course. Cal admitted this one:

But plenty of those injuries that fans were certain about were actually legit.

This big fella hitting the deck in order to deal with one of his shoes falling off, however, was both a flop and an actual emergency:

Whatever happened here

This one was too confusing to say Michigan QB John O’Korn definitely flopped. We had eight different theories at the time, and I’m sticking by the one about the staffer on the left hitting O’Korn with the Force.

William James, Chapman

Lots of players flop, and defenders fake injuries, but none of them can go full SOCCER ANGUISH quite like a punter can.

Rashaan Gaulden, Tennessee

In 2016, the man who’d become a legend by flipping off a horde of Bama fans got a Florida player ejected for hurtling Back And To The Left after being tapped on the face mask. That makes him a flipper and a flopper, I’m afraid.

Daniel Bituli, Tennessee

This is one of the silliest ones, for two reasons:

1. Bituliu’s gently waving hands during his long, leisurely plummet to the turf. Hello everyone, this is your captain speaking, and we are currently on our descent approach to the ground. We’ll be landing shortly. The weather in Lexington is angry.
2. Both players were ejected for this because the entire rosters had been hit with unsportsmanlike flags earlier in the game.

Bradley Chubb, NC State

A notorious goofball, the eventual first-rounder turned a moment in a chippy Syracuse game into the scene from Hot Rod where the guy’s falling down the side of a hill for so long, it goes past being funny and becomes not funny and then becomes funny and then repeats that whole cycle two more times and ends up funny.

Feleipe Franks, Florida

You know, there’s kind of a lot of SEC on this list.

Kenyan Drake, Alabama

This against Michigan State was a noteworthy flop ...

... but:

Jake Bentley, South Carolina

When you step backward into a sinkhole:

Bret Bielema, Arkansas HEAD COACH

HEAD COACH.

The HEAD COACH did that.

Jamal Adams, LSU

And now, the GOAT.

Note the complete lack of hesitation once he’s nudged by Ole Miss’ QB. BAM.

Adams trusts his instincts. He also trusts gravity. That instant reaction time is what sets him apart from other floppers. There is no deliberation. It’s time to flop. DOWN WE GO.

Watch him in action against Florida two weeks later in 2014, with his victory lap after this one continuing to 2018: