Keith Duggan/Sideline Cut:We pay resolute attention to the machinations of Congress in this newspaper but we obviously missed the passing of the motion to turn the GAA into a funky beast.

Just what has happened at the place we fondly refer to as "headquarters"? Not so long ago, that euphemism seemed perfectly apt for a ground that always conducted itself as stiffly as a military barracks and carried the same vague air of foreboding. The old Croke Park looked like it was dreamt up by Bram Stoker, all shadows and cobwebs and crepuscular faces peering out from narrow boxes as they pocketed your money. Even on scorching days, children under 12 walked around the place with blue lips. Men whose idea of a pleasurable afternoon was a good bout of bare-knuckle fighting trembled at the thought of visiting the jacks. The old stadium felt like it was set in frost and that was fine because thousands came on the principle that they would be warmed by the game. A great match was like standing in the night cold around a wood-lit barrel.

But now! It is as if the quarter-final stage of the All-Ireland is not so much a great sports weekend as the announcement of a heatwave. Donegal, for instance, seem congenitally incapable of playing in Croke Park unless it is about 35 degrees Celsius.

At the bank holiday games, it was hot and bright and, most strangely, the atmosphere promoted was one of . . . fun. Surely I was not the only one mildly disconcerted by the historic appearance of Fermanagh to the sound of the Cardigans booming across Croke Park.

Live and Learn was the song they were playing, apt as it turned out and also blessed with a wistful and addictive little guitar riff. Not only that but in a trend that set the tone for the weekend, each of the players was given an individual and hyperbolic introduction.

I watched this unfolding sound and vision of GAA hip and, no more than Natalie Imbruglia, I found I was torn. The possibilities for this kind of carry-on are, of course, endless. It may already be too late. Being from Donegal, I'm not sure I will ever be happy again until I see Brendan Devenney go through his pre-game routine on All-Ireland final day to the sound of Ice Cube's Today Was A Good Day. It just seems like the natural progression of things.

But I worry, for it is certain to end in tears. The next step will be theme songs for various counties. We will have Cork teams take the field to David Bowie's Rebel, Rebel, breaking into Bootylicious whenever they announce the name of the great Corkery. MTV will see the potential and get a piece of GAA action.

Before we know it, we will all be glued to Championship Cribs, with our favourite players escorting us through their pads and speaking to us in a kind of East Coast LA Esperanto.

"Yo, ya all! This here I like to call my Hall of Fame. Check out my under-12 Comórtas bling, boo. It's phat."

And so on. Croke Park will become the must-be hangout for Ireland's jet set. All 12 of them will insist on arriving in helicopters. As if Danny Lynch wasn't busy enough without standing on the roof of the Cusack waving orange hankies and making like an umpire waving a ball wide.

And of course, the corporate sector will not be enough for them. There will be no peace until the GAA install a special row of celebrity front-row seats, right behind the team benches so that they can stand in outrage like Jack Nicholson at the LA Forum or Spike Lee at Madison Square Garden. Next time Tommy Lyons finds himself in a tight spot, he can rest assured that Gerry Ryan will be right next to him on the sideline, making inflammatory "choker" signs at the Armagh players.

As for the All-Ireland final half-time entertainment, one can only imagine.

Croker will have to keep outdoing itself. A re-enactment of U2's Zooropa might just be possible but then what? All four hours of La Boheme? Fine if Armagh are in the dressing-room but otherwise, it could lead to problems.

I remember hearing the subject of All-Ireland final day entertainment addressed unforgettably in the run-up to the 1998 showpiece. This, bear in mind, was the last year of the old monolithic Croke Park, with its naked electricity wires highlighted with little "!" signs (meaning: caution, we have given you fair warning and if you touch it and get frazzled to death, don't come running to us) and its great old hissing, strangled PA system and its refusal to shift from a mean temperature of around minus three.

A journalist, speaking to a prominent GAA figure, asked: "So who can we expect this year. Puff Daddy, I suppose?" The GAA man took the joke and doubled on it brilliantly by saying: "Christ, thanks for reminding me, we have no one booked as yet [this was about three days before the final]. I must call into the cabaret in Barry's tonight."

I think I laughed for about a month. The thing is that if P Diddy, as he now prefers to be called, were to walk by me in Croke Park wearing a Henry Shefflin replica shirt, I would not so much as blink. It is the way we are headed.

All of which leads to the point that maybe the GAA should stick to the rule that less is more. Nowadays, society seems to operate on the principle that when you have a large crowd gathered for an event, you cannot leave them to their own devices for more than 30 seconds in case they might actually start conversing or something. So they pummel them with music (in most cases, Queen songs) and promotional events and lads trying to create "atmosphere". Maybe the GAA is overtly conscious of its changing demographic; Croke Park is no longer peaked-cap country. As Jay-Z noted in his gentle rap song dealing with the issue of the changing scene at Croker, the place has "girls, girls, girls, girls".

One hundred years have proven that GAA crowds do not need pep rallies to get all frothy at the mouth. Given the Artane Boys' Band, a Maxi twist and a match programme, they have always happily transported themselves to moo-moo land. Perhaps the arrival of happy and prosperous youth has convinced them this is no longer enough.

And for now, the sound of pop music in the sunshine is a novel departure and serves to cover proceedings in the gauze of sexiness. The danger (!) is that, when the novelty wears off, All-Ireland days at Croke Park would have an homogenous feel to them, that they would fall in, in bland synchronicity, with the mega-arenas in the States and even the new-fangled Premiership soccer grounds.

Championship days are grave. They can define eras for entire counties. That is what gives them their atmosphere. At every big match, there are those few delicious seconds when the last bars of the national anthem give way to a welling roar of insatiable hope and fear and happiness.

In that noise, in that raw and collective outpouring, the GAA has the bottled essence of sport. The trick now is not to lose it for a canned product. Lose that and all is lost.