By STEVE WILSTEIN AP Sports Columnist Randy Moss makes his living with his talent, makes his name with his antics.

Moss was just being himself when he bent over in the end zone after his second touchdown catch in Minnesota’s 31-17 playoff win Sunday, pretended to strip off his pants, and pantomimed a moonshot at Green Bay fans.

Some took offense, some thought it was amusing, even appropriate, after the way fans had been riding him during the game.

Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy thought it was funny, if not quite right for national television. He thought it was Moss’ answer to Green Bay fans, who have a tradition of mooning the visiting team’s bus in the parking lot after a game.

Minnesota center Matt Birk, who confronted Moss the previous week about leaving the field with 2 seconds left in a loss at Washington, didn’t consider Moss’ latest stunt a team ‘‘distraction.’’ This time, Birk defended Moss — sort of.

‘‘Brett Favre used to do the throat slash. I think that’s worse than just a fake moon,’’ Birk said. ‘‘But, you know, Randy’s Randy and Brett’s Brett, so Randy gets heat.’’

Moss surely wasn’t the first player to want to moon the fans, but he was the first to do it next to the goal posts in the fourth quarter of a playoff game on national television. He has timing and he’s not camera shy.

The NFL doubtlessly will fine him, perhaps the $5,000 that disciplinary guidelines provide for the first offense of making ‘‘obscene gestures or other actions construed as being in poor taste.’’

For a man making $5 million this season, losing .001 off the top must hurt as much as snipping the tips off his Afro. Moss can’t buy publicity any cheaper.

‘‘Just having a little fun with the boys a little bit,’’ he said after the game. ‘‘I hope I don’t get in trouble by it, but if I do I’ll take the heat.’’

Moss certainly can expect to get ragged by Philadelphia fans on Sunday, though he won’t have Terrell Owens trying to show him up.

The pseudo-moonshot was a harmless, if crass, prank that by itself is of little consequence. All Moss revealed was his knack for attracting attention, good and bad, just as he has his whole career. Nobody acts the way he does and wears hair so big hoping to go unnoticed.

The problem with Moss’ mooning was that it can be one of those little taunts that can turn into something more serious. The rise in player-fan confrontations in American pro sports in recent years reached the point of a near-riot at the NBA Indiana Pacers-Detroit Pistons game two months ago.

What if insulted Green Bay fans had thrown things at Moss as he jiggled his butt in front of them? Would Moss or his teammates have charged the crowd as Ron Artest did in Detroit after a fan tossed a cup at him?

Vikings tight end Jermaine Wiggins thought Moss was just ‘‘having a good time’’ and responding in kind to fans who had been heckling him nastily.

‘‘If people keep saying so many things to you,’’ Wiggins said, ‘‘it’s going to come to a point in time where you’re just going to say, ‘You know what? To hell with this, and I’m going to do what I’ve got to do.’’’

But that’s not what a player’s got to do. The player’s the pro, the one who should act professionally. There’s no manhood at stake. Moss proved his manhood on the field, playing hard start to finish, when he limped off with his two TDs and a sprained ankle. He didn’t have to sully the day with the silly stuff.

The NFL has been in a tizzy over anything that smacks of indecency since Janet Jackson’s breast-baring ‘‘wardrobe malfunction’’ at the Super Bowl last year. The league was embarrassed by the risque ‘‘Monday Night Football’’ intro two months ago when ‘‘Desperate Housewives’’ star Nicollette Sheridan tossed away her shower towel and appeared to be nude as she seduced Owens in the locker room before the Eagles-Cowboys game.

Even those of us who weren’t particularly offended by either of those incidents have to be grateful to the NFL for sparing us from staring at Mickey Rooney’s bare butt in a Super Bowl ad this year.

Instead we got Moss’ wiggling derriere, happily fully clothed.

Moss has had his share of legal problems off the field but his football transgressions over the years — he once squirted a referee with a water bottle — are piddling stuff, on the order of the nonsense pulled by Owens and New Orleans’ Joe Horn. They all got the attention they craved, though not the reputation these superstar wannabes might have wanted.

They would have served themselves better by fashioning themselves after the best in the game. Jerry Rice managed to set virtually every receiving record without once looking like a jerk.

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Steve Wilstein is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at:

swilstein@ap.org