Players should sign over any money made from potential endorsements, too. Otto Greule Jr./Getty Images

By Peter King

The biggest question in the Joe Horn/Cellgate should not be: How do we punish him? The biggest question should be: What do we do to stop this from happening?

The answer to both questions is one in the same. You want players in the NFL to stop signing footballs with Sharpies after scoring touchdowns, right? And to stop picking up cellphones after touchdowns behind the goalpost, right? So what if you fined the player more than the NFL's been fining him, more than the $30,000 the NFL will take from Horn. Say a $75,000 fine for any egregious individual celebration after a touchdown. That's part one.

Part two is this: Fine the player the commensurate amount he makes from any post-violation endorsement he gets for being insolent. San Francisco wide receiver Terrell Owens, who signed a football with a Sharpie in a post-score celebration last year, earned an endorsement from Sharpie. Let's say the company paid him $20,000. Then the NFL should fine Owens $95,000--the original fine, plus the endorsement money.

So if Horn were to get a deal with Verizon, for example, he'd have to fork over the equivalent of that endorsement amount to NFL Charities.

Players still might do selfish things. But under my plan, they'd get penalized 15 yards, then, other than the yowling from SportsCenter' after the game, they would not profit financially from the act.

The idea of the punishment should be to try to stave off future selfish acts. I cannot tell you if this will do it for every player, but this at least will make them think: I'm not going to profit from this, and my team's going to get penalized. Why in the world am I doing this?

Who cares what Joe Horn's long-distance bill totals? Call on him to be ejected. AP

By Don Banks

I don't happen to believe that the Joe Horn cell phone stunt qualifies as one of the signs of the apocalypse, but if the NFL really wants to bring an end to such end zone choreography, it needs to make sure the punishment for such an act packs considerably more wallop.

The heck with slap-on-the-wrist fines. Players are now building them into their budgets under the heading of discretionary spending. You want to get the attention of all the showmen and potential showmen out there? Yank the entertainer off the stage and put him on the sidelines the next time somebody pulls a Joe Horn. No matter how much the rules favor the offense in today's NFL, it's still hard to score if you're not in the game.

We're not concerned with spontaneous celebrations. But we are talking automatic game ejection for unsportsmanlike conduct every time a player pulls off a routine that smacks of premeditation. And yes, a game suspension should be considered if the message still doesn't get through.

You think the rest of the Saints really care that Horn had to cough up $30,000 for going long distance in Sunday night's silliness? But let Horn get tossed out of a tight game with New Orleans fighting for its playoff life and see how the rest of the Saints and their coaches react. Like the screw-up boot camp recruit whose punishment is inflicted on the entire unit, making everybody pay for Horn's mistake is how you introduce the corrective powers of peer pressure into the equation.

Players will think twice if it's more than their wallet taking the hit for their moment of selfish end-zone theater. Make the consequences broadly felt, and the perpetrator will have more to consider than himself. For a change.