Ron Rivera - A Winner Who's A Loser

.@RiverboatRonHC says he promised his players he'd do the dab if they played well. @ThomasDavisSDTM held him to it. https://t.co/C5PbHv39N0
— Carolina Panthers (@Panthers) November 23, 2015

When can a winner still be a loser? It's easy when your name is Ron Rivera. (Click on the link. Please.)

Carolina Panthers supporters have reason to be happy this season, with their team off to a 9-0 start. But those who consider themselves serious football fans with a deep appreciation of the game should be ashamed of their coach Rivera's bush-league behavior.

One quality of being a true professional, whether you're talking about athletics or most any other field, is knowing how to be a graceful winner as well as a gracious loser. In playing professional sports, with teams generally evenly matched under a scenario of any one of them being able to win on a given Sunday, it's a sure bet that sooner or later a player will find himself on the losing end of things.

Yet you wouldn't know that judging by the actions of Ron Rivera, who instantly became irritating by picking a quarterback donning jersey No. 1 when he entered the National Football League. That made an egotistical statement that the great coaches don't see the need to make when they fall ass backwards into hall of fame quarterbacks that pick numbers 12 or 18, who instead let their performances do the talking.

Rivera further irritated serious fans of the game when he allowed Newton to do a celebration after scoring a touchdown in which he simulated Clark Kent pulling open his shirt to reveal that he is Superman. Now, I usually appreciate imaginative endzone celebrations, but Superman?

The Panthers coach has taken his antics to a new low with several recent incidents.

One occurred on Nov. 8 when Carolina hosted the Green Bay Packers and a Packers fan was displaying a large banner showing a map of North Carolina in the Green Bay color scheme and superimposed with the team's big-G logo. Newton ripped down and disposed of the banner, which supposedly had cost the fan $500 and Rivera did nothing.

Now Tom Joyce has been in the Panthers' stadium when they played the Packers and it's safe to say there were more Green Bay fans present than Panthers supporters — at least they were making more noise. The same has been true with other iconic teams with a nationwide fan base (which does not include the Panthers), such as the Steelers and Cowboys (although Dallas has no business calling itself America's Team).

Rivera really took the cake last Sunday with his quarterback's deplorable behavior in a win against the Tennessee Titans in Nashville.

As Rivera watched on, he finished off Panthers' scoring drives with "in-your-face" taunts of both the Titans' players and fans, complete with chest pumps, pelvic thrusts and arrogant struts. It made one long for the good old days of the Clark Kent/Superman routine.

Naturally, Newton's childish and unprofessional behavior irked Titans players and fans, including one mother who chastised him in a letter she shared with the Charlotte Observer. One person it didn't irk? Ron Rivera.

Rosemary Plorin of Nashville wrote how Sunday's game was the first live NFL experience for her 9-year-old daughter, who sat near an end zone and had a close-up view of Newton's post-touchdown theatrics.

After witnessing this, the daughter had a number of questions, such as "Won't he get in trouble for doing that? Is he trying to make people mad? Do you think he knows he looks like a spoiled brat?"

Meanwhile Sunday afternoon, New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick quietly led his team to victory over their nemesis the New York Giants. Now if anyone had reason to chest-pump or pelvic-thrust, it was Belichick, since the Giants had robbed him of two Super Bowl victories in recent years.

Belichick simply looked on as Tom Brady hugged a few teammates after the winning drive and exchanged high-fives, but somehow did not see a need to rub it in the Giants' faces.

That's because love him or hate him, Belichick not only possesses Superman-like tactics on the field, but — unlike Ron Rivera — the intellect to know that there is a certain karma with sports in that whatever goes around comes around.

And if Ron Rivera doesn't modify his behavior, he is going to one day find himself lying flat on his back in pain from being blindsided by some linebacker or defensive end in payback mode. And while looking up at the Carolina blue sky, Rivera also will see said linebacker or defensive end taunting him with chest-pumps or whatever.

It might be next week or next month, but this will happen.