Everyone wants to get back to 90s level of success, but it's going to be a painful process. In the last few years, we have been beaten by NIU, Troy and Purdue at home, have finished 4-8 in back to back seasons, and have 9-9 home record since 2017, and haven't been competitive in the Big10 West. We need to realize that we are starting from ground zero again. We haven't even been able to play more than 2 or 3 quarters of football for several years. The team celebrated the NW win like they just beat Clemson, so it tells us where our mindset is at this point in time. We need to learn how to play 4 quarters and win, and make those two things a habit as much as possible before we can move on to loftier goals. It sucks, and I sure don't want to wait much longer, and keep losing, but we are starting from scratch in a lot of ways.
The players should be celebrating like that. Nothing wrong with celebrating a win, no matter who the opponent or how it happened. These kids are here for a short time. Celebrating a win and being happy about how the team played is not the same thing.
I'm OK with a team getting excited about a win against what is usually a formidable Big 10 West team... especially when it's basically a Rudy getting the lucky kick through the goalposts. I seem to remember a team that was excited to walk away with a win after a miracle catch by a nearly unknown freshman as time expired in Missouri in '97 despite the fact that Missouri wasn't exactly known to be a juggernaut.
Don't get me wrong, I'm fine with celebrating ANY win, and this was a good one, especially considering what the team has been through lately, and how NW has given us trouble recently. I was just trying to illustrate how far even the teams expectations have changed from those power teams of old. Back then, the team would celebrate wildly over beating Oklahoma, and occasionally some other conference foes, and now it's happening when we beat a 1-3 NW team. The main point was that we are starting from scratch, and standards and expectations HAVE changed at this point in time....and, like you mention, there's a long way to go..
Not "Complaining" at all, just making a point about expectations changing, for us and the players, and how it plays out with celebrations.. If you don't think clearing the benches in celebration has anything to do with expectations, that's fine. We can just disagree and leave it at that.
I don't have a problem with them celebrating, I think it's great. But, you have some of the iconic coaches telling players not to wildly celebrate when they score a TD, because they should "act like you've been there before", meaning that it wasn't a surprise and was EXPECTED. In this sense, I submit celebrations are related to expectations, so we will just have to disagree.
You say the bolded...then spend the rest of your post explaining why they shouldn't have celebrated.