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NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and his associates are in danger of looking idiotic if they’re not careful on how they handle this sign language snafu.

But this is a little different. In scrutinizing communication between players via hand signals, it is doing so with the predetermined notion that something sinister is going on. It’s not much different than racial profiling. If a player does anything with his hands now that isn’t directly related to a play on the field, it could be assumed that he’s a thug.

This is not to condone gang signals. Not a bit. Street gangs are a menace, and what society doesn’t need is their presence seeping deeper into everyday life. This NFL crackdown is just a slippery slope. This all could be perceived as a bunch of rich white guys with no interest in and no understanding of minority culture engaging in sign-language McCarthyism.

The league apparently lectures players on the dangers of gang associations, going so far as to make each one watch an anti-gang video before the season. Rookies receive extra counsel on the topic.

Milt Ahlerich, the NFL’s vice president of security, said in the L.A. Times report that he didn’t think the problem was widespread, but that the league had spoken to some players about some signals they had made with their hands.

That’s all commendable, the informational sessions with players and the discreet talking-to if something seems suspicious.

It’s just this latest development — bringing in so-called gang sign authorities to pore over video of players’ gestures — that smacks of persecution.

Said Jacksonville Jaguars wide receiver Dennis Northcutt, to the L.A. Times: “Guys come from all over the country, and who knows what they’re really doing? People have got signs for their kids, signs for their fraternities. How do you differentiate who’s really throwing up gang signs?”

That’s just it. Goodell is the final authority on all such decisions. When a player runs afoul of the law, for instance, he not only determines the penalty, but oversees the appeal as well. He and his underlings will now be wielding the gavel and determining whether a particular arrangement of fingers by one of the NFL’s players constitutes a promise of great bodily harm to an enemy, or an expression of love to mom.

I have a common gesture I’d like to submit here: I take my index finger and drag it across my throat. Sometimes it’s construed as a threat. But it also is done on movie and television productions when someone in charge wants to yell “Cut!”

The latter is how I’d like to use it in regard to the NFL, as in “Cut!” this exercise in paranoia.

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