AP

Maybe the NFL just didn’t want to give fans any ideas.

While the league allowed permission to use its logos and images for the upcoming movie “Draft Day,” there were certain lengths they weren’t willing to go.

Actor Kevin Costner, who plays the General Manager of the Browns in the film, told Sam Farmer of the Los Angeles Times that the league stepped in and cut a scene of fans hanging his character in effigy.

“I thought it was a real funny moment, but I think the NFL’s really cracking down on fan behavior both inside the stadium and outside,” Costner said. “The idea of hanging somebody, for as funny as I thought it was, and as realistic as I thought it was, it was just an image that I didn’t want in the movie. That was a small price for us to pay, but it shows that they were watching very closely.”

That the league allowed the use of their trademarks at all is a bit of an upset, since so many movies have had to make do with fictional teams and uniforms, which Costner said would have dampened his enthusiasm for the project.