Sports

NFL should’ve disciplined coaches for postgame actions

MAD MEN: Mark Cannizzaro says commissioner Roger Goodell should have disciplined 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh (left) and Lions coach Jim Schwartz (right) for their skirmish on Sunday. (AP)

The same way you can not take your eyes off one of those beer-muscle fights between a couple of knuckleheads in the stands at a football game, you cannot take your eyes off the video of the animated skirmish between 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh and Lions coach Jim Schwartz that occurred at the end of Sunday’s San Francisco win in Detroit.

It was Jerry Springer theater — a guilty pleasure.

It was intriguing because it was such a stark departure from the boring and routine deals those head coach handshakes usually are (except for the awkward Bill Belichick-Eric Mangini postgame sessions a few years ago).

It was comical in the way it unfolded and then escalated like a scene in a cartoon.

That, however, is where the laughs should end and where NFL commissioner Roger Goodell must step in.

The problem is, Goodell opted not to step in yesterday, saying through an NFL spokesman because there were no actual punches thrown there’s “no basis for a fine.”

That stance makes Goodell a hypocrite, because if those were a couple of players going at it at the end of a game, you can bet your PSLs they would be fined or suspended or both.

Goodell ignoring the Harbaugh-Schwartz dust-up sends a message coaches are held to a different code of conduct than the players are, and that’s a dangerous message.

If anything, coaches should be held to a higher standard than players since they are, well, head coaches.

Both Harbaugh and Schwartz were equally at fault in this fiasco. Harbaugh started it and Schwartz prolonged it. Both could have — and should have — handled it better.

Harbaugh never even looked at Schwartz when he met him on the field, looking like some arrogant celebrity shaking a fan’s hand and pushing him aside with disinterest.

Schwartz had a right to be ticked off and express his disdain at being disrespected, but he should have done it in a different way. Approaching Harbaugh in private or even calling him out publicly to reporters would have been a better way to hand it.

Allowing it to become the sideshow it became is a black eye for the league, which is why both coaches should have been disciplined.

There has been speculation Harbaugh was ticked off at Schwartz for apparently poking fun at him in the first quarter when Harbaugh challenged an unchallengeable Detroit scoring play and drew a penalty. Schwartz appeared to yell, “Know the rules” across the field.

Harbaugh’s response to the postgame incident was delivered with a smirk on his face and was saturated with sarcasm when he said: “I was just really revved up and that is totally on me. I shook his hand too hard. I really went in and it was a strong, kind of a slap-grab handshake. That was on me. A little too hard of a handshake there.”

Schwartz said he “went to congratulate” Harbaugh and “got shoved out of the way” and that Harbaugh shouted obscenities at him.

“Obviously, when you win a game like that, you are excited, but there is a protocol that goes with this league,” Schwartz said.

There, too, is a protocol for all NFL coaches and how they conduct themselves on game days and both Harbaugh and Schwartz violated that protocol.

The irony here is that the high-intensity exuberance of both coaches that led to Sunday’s smack-down is a big part of what has each of their teams playing so well as two of the NFL’s surprise stories this season.

That, however, doesn’t excuse their behavior following Sunday’s game.

mark.cannizzaro@nypost.com