Jerry Rice's Cabbage Patch Dance and Dancing with the Stars

In his book, Go Long, Jerry Rice claims that he retired from the NFL with very little dancing experience. Strictly speaking he may be right, but many 49er fans remember his younger days, when he brought out a Cabbage Patch Dance to celebrate his touchdowns. Rice didn’t invent the dance, but he brought it to new levels of fame. I don’t recall exactly when he started the dance-it may have been 1986-but in 1987, when he scored 23 touchdowns in the 12 games he played, it became a primary calling card for Rice.

Who were the Cabbage Patch Kids? They were a group of dolls that had tan skin, stubby bodies made from fabric, and long, stringy hair that looked like yarn. Their mid-‘80s cousins were the Smurfs and the Garbage Pail Kids. If this doesn’t ring a bell, you can think of them as the Power Rangers, Tickle Me Elmos, Beanie Babies, and Tamagotchis of their day.

In Go Long, Rice describes his dance as “a simple move of raising one's shoulders and pretending to churn butter.” You can see black-and-white pictures of Rice scoring a touchdown against the Bears in 1987 and then doing his Cabbage Patch Dance here. You can also find clips of the Cabbage Patch Dance on YouTube and elsewhere for a fuller visualization of the dance.

Rice retired his dance either toward the end of the 1987 season or before the 1988 season. In Go Long, he explains: “On Saturday nights before games, if we had won the previous week, the coaching staff showed us a highlight reel of the best plays from the latest victory. Watching myself celebrate like an ass embarrassed me, though most of my teammates thought it was funny. I didn't need to show off by dancing after scoring. . . . Joe [Montana] and Roger [Craig] were the consummate pros and they didn't need to show off, so why should I?” 

For a few years after retiring the dance Rice still had some eye-catching routines on the field, including having a pristine white Flash 80 towel hanging down from his belt and sometimes pointing into the crowd after scoring on a touchdown play. But, he gradually settled down into simply being the best receiver in the NFL. After his final season with the Seahawks in 2004 and retirement the next summer, Rice found himself with time on his hands.

He put in a brief stay at Spike TV, where he was the biggest star of the first season of a show called Pros vs. Joes that pits sports stars against ordinary guys off the street. Then, as you probably already know, he decided to go on Dancing with the Stars in early 2006, and came in second place in the show’s second season. The next season, in late 2006, Emmitt Smith tried his hand at the show and came in first.

What’s the explanation for why former NFL stars and other sports figures do so well on Dancing with the Stars? I’m not sure, but certainly in the NFL and most other sports, it’s crucial to develop and strengthen your footwork and balance in order to succeed, and those are two skills that translate very easily into dancing. In the case of Rice and Smith, it’s quite possible that the wear and tear from so many years in the NFL gave their dance moves a softness, lightness, and balance that made them look very good on the dance floor, whereas if they had been on a dancing show earlier in their lives they would have moved too quickly and too aggressively.