For years, players have had a hard time controlling their emotions when they feel opposing crowds have just been too harsh. Sometimes they protest with vociferous argument. Sometimes they just roll their eyeballs. Occasionally, they take things a step further, and shoot the bird at the home crowd.

(It’s only cool when Johnny Cash does it)

Well, a New Jersey teenager got in on the act when she couldn’t hold back her emotion during a high school basketball game on Wednesday, charging on to the court to flip off the hosting school’s crowd … promptly earning herself an arrest for the on-court adventure.

“Obviously she was not a big fan of Penns Grove,” Carney’s Point township Sargeant Brian Nixon said.

According to the SALEM COUNTY SUNBEAM, 18-year-old Jaclyn Brown was so frustrated with what she considered poor refereeing against her Gloucester team — which was visiting Penns Grove — that she ran onto the court and shot her middle digit at the Penns Grove faithful.

The act itself isn’t surprising. After all, this is high school sports, where emotion runs as high as cheerleading skirt lines. The arrest, however, is. Consider all the professional athletes who have gone before young Ms. Brown with the exact same action:

Phoenix’s Matt Barnes flipped off fans earlier this month, Michael Vick’s ill-fated flip off in 2006 presaged his eventual departure (as did Keyshawn Johnson’s with the Jets), and Allen Iverson (2003), Ron Artest, Brad Miller and Bonzi Wells (something tells us that won’t go over too well in China) have all felt fines for shooting the bird.

So, why were all these “obscene hand gestures” from highly paid, fully grown athletic professionals excused away as isolated incidents worthy only of a fine, while a New Jersey teenager was arrested, charged, released and given a future court date over a charge of public disturbance? And if flipping the bird to a crowd is a disturbance, shouldn’t lewdly cursing opposing players in front of children in a crowd also be a public disturbance? Somehow this smacks of a double standard to us.

We just hope Jaclyn Brown gets off with a fine and doesn’t have to do time. Something about an 18-year-old girl in a prison cell for the softest crime possible just seems like a golden opportunity for abuse. Hey, why not community service? Maybe she could visit classrooms and teach kids about the dangers of flipping the bird. “Don’t be like me kids. You could lose your finger if you flip someone off through the roof of a convertible. Or you could be arrested by ridiculously aggressive cops.”

Maybe she still has a future after all.