Giants WR Victor Cruz explains the history of the salsa dance.

New York Giants WR Victor Cruz is stuck with his end zone salsa celebration dance just as much as comedian Dave Chappelle is stuck with the “I’m Rick James,” catcall.

Both entities are signature moves that have come to define their careers although I doubt Cruz will runaway to Africa to escape the fame and the money that comes with his.

Cruz recently told New York’s WFAN and radio host Mike Francesa the origins of the dance.

“Well my grandmother was the one who taught me how to do the dance and I remember my coach, Coach Sullivan, who was our quarterback’s coach at the time, when I was getting my first start against Philadelphia he was like man you gotta do something to represent your culture and your ethnicity and all Puerto Ricans and Latin people all over.

He’s like you gotta dance in the end zone. At first I was like coach I don’t know if I am going to dance in the end zone.”

Francesa chimed in ‘so a coach told you do it?’

To which Cruz went deeper into how it all played out.

“Yeah. We always had conversations like that and he was like man you gotta do it. I told him yeah to get him out of my face and we could continue practice and then right before the game he looked at me at that point and was like you gotta do it. ‘I was like alright coach.’

Low and behold early in the game I catch a pass and I am going down the sideline and I am about at the 5-yard line and in my head I am like man I gotta do this dance now. I put the ball down and I just started dancing. I got really into it once I started doing it and it kind of took a life of its own after that.”

It certainly did as the salsa dance was added to EA Sports’ upcoming Madden 13 video  game and Dallas Cowboys’ CB Brandon Carr has stated specifically that its his mission to prevent Cruz from doing the dance when the teams see each other twice if not three times this season.

Cruz is currently out promoting his book Out of The Blue.