The original Griffining pose traveled far beyond a single photograph or a short-lived hashtag. Within days of Robert Griffin III’s first NFL touchdown on September 9, 2012, fan recreations had appeared across multiple sports outlets. A later retrospective published by Washington’s own football organization treated the pose as one of the memorable celebrations of its 2012 season.
September 10: photo sharing moves into sports coverage
A CBS Sports report dated September 10 credited Burgundy Blog with starting the trend and reproduced three fan-submitted examples with contributor handles. A separate Diehard Sport article from September 10 also identified Burgundy Blog’s Twitter submissions as early examples. Together they show how quickly a moment from the Saints game became a participatory photo meme.
These are independent press reproductions of fan images, not proof that the same pictures appeared in the original Griffining.com galleries. That’s an important distinction for the restoration.
September 11–12: the NFL and RG3 respond
An NFL.com report dated September 11 documented the @Griffining Twitter account, a Baylor-campus recreation, an airport photo and a kindergarten-class submission, along with Griffin’s amused social-media reaction. A FOX Sports report from September 12 then covered comments from Griffin himself about the unexpected popularity of the pose.
An important archival lesson follows from these reports: a contemporary social-media image may be historically documented even when its original tweet or website upload cannot yet be recovered. We can preserve the citation and attribution without republishing a third-party photograph or claiming that its rights have transferred.
A place in Washington’s official 2012 season retrospective
Washington’s official team website later published a Top 12 Player Celebrations From 2012 photo gallery. The editorial countdown placed Robert Griffin III’s Griffining gesture at No. 4, describing the original seated celebration following his 88-yard touchdown pass to Pierre Garçon in Week 1 against New Orleans. The surviving page does not provide a clear original publication date, so it should be treated as a retrospective rather than a September 2012 contemporaneous article.
This is particularly useful because the organization whose player inspired the gesture chose to include the meme in its account of that season. It is not evidence for the original Griffining.com website’s own separate Top 10 category, whose ranking has not been recovered.
What we’re preserving on Griffining.com
The primary-source directory tracks contemporary reporting. The 63-entry archived-site inventory and historical photo timeline document individual original Griffining.com submissions separately. Our recovery checklist identifies original images whose files remain missing.
That separation is deliberate: the original fan-photo site, the broader phenomenon in the press, and later historical retrospectives are related but not interchangeable records.