The Pigskin
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2014 Season Clips (5)
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The video page will continue bringing you clips which are good learning material as we all work together to understand and enforce the sometimes complicated NCAA football rules. The videos are not meant to demean or belittle any official. They are used so that ALL officials can learn from the situations and issues other officials encounter in their games. No official has ever completed a career error-free. But by sharing our errors with others we help them avoid the same pitfalls. NCAA football officials at all levels exhibit incredible rule knowledge week in and week out. We can always get better and this page hopes to serve in that effort.
Our past poll returned us to the land of inconsistency. 56% of the crew judged the pass to be uncatchable and 44% ruled it catchable. However, some of those who ruled catchable said that even with that, there was no foul for DPI as the contact was incidental and not a clear intent to impede.
This week's poll play features another area of the game where there is often disagreement among officials, is contact on a punter properly ruled running into, roughing, or no foul at all? Running into the kicker requires the kicker be displaced from his position. Roughing requires that he be hit in a manner that endangers him. Incidental contact is not a foul. When in question if running into or roughing, the foul is roughing. How would you rule on this play? Is there a catchable forward pass? Please view this play video and take the poll. (Please remember to scroll down and click on the DONE button after making your choice.)
A late-Summer bulletin from the CFO confused many officials about the sideline management. While the stated intent of the bulletin was to re-emphasize the importance of keeping the sidelines clear to permit officials to "work in the white" without fear of collision, the specifics of the bulletin seemed to contradict the purpose. The bulletin instructed officials to return to the previous practice of giving an official warning before penalizing teams for "Game Administration Interference" (9-2-5). But, the rule actually directs a 5 yard penalty for the first and second infractions and a 15 yard penalty for third and subsequent infractions. In this video clip, the crew penalized immediately, as the rule is written. Perhaps that is what their conference has directed. How many crews warn teams before the game about keeping the sidelines clear? We suspect most do. That should be all the warning they need. Do we also have to warn them not to false start, or to make sure they snap the ball before the play clock expires, or not to be offside when the ball is snapped, etc. ? But not only do we have to warn them before the game about sidelines, we have to warn them "officially" during the game before they are penalized? "C'mon man!!!"
"Coach, I have bad news and I have worse news." Not only does Team A not get the benefit of a late-hit penalty, they get penalized for holding. Despite the "concerns" of the commentator, the hit at the end of the play was clearly legal. The covering officials were in good position to rule and properly judged the hit NOT to be late as the ball carrier was still in-bounds.
This is a somewhat odd play. When the loose ball is kicked off the ground as it was here, this is not a scrimmage kick. In this play, it was a muffed backward pass that was then illegally kicked. As a muffed backward pass, the ball can still be recovered and advanced by Team A, even though it was illegally kicked. Therefore, the ball was not dead when A33 picked it up. It DID become dead once the Umpire possessed it (4-1-3-n). By rule, that possession by an official causes the inadvertent whistle provisions to "kick" in. Perhaps we need a rule change to add to the list of what causes a ball to become dead, i.e. when a player in possession of the ball is obviously making no attempt to continue play . We may bring this play back later in the season as a poll play to address the action an official should take when a player attempts to give him a live ball. In this particular play, since there was a foul with an enforced penalty, the inadvertent whistle provisions would not have been a concern anyway. The foul was properly enforced, 1/2 the distance to the goal with loss of down (9-4-4).
Ineligibles Downfield, but.........
This is a head-scratcher but just more proof of how humbling this game can be. You can be one of the top officials in NCAA football and still make a mistake. Perhaps that will be some consolation for those who toil in the "lower" levels of football and beat themselves up when they make a mistake. Clearly the inside receiver was covered up and went downfield on an obvious pass play. But it is not just that simple. In order for his action to be a foul, there also has to have been a legal forward pass that crossed the neutral zone and he had to have been illegally downfield before the pass was thrown. The pass here was clearly tipped behind the line of scrimmage. In fact, it was tipped right in front of the same official who flagged the ineligible downfield. Since it was tipped behind the line of scrimmage, there is no foul possible for ineligible downfield, even if the pass had managed to go beyond the neutral zone (2-19-3-a). From this viewing spot in the comfy recliner, it seems the Referee and Center Judge may have also realized the ball was tipped and should have questioned the call.
Football officials have been given the awesome responsibility of maintaining the discipline and standards of this great game. Despite what the talking heads may think, there are acts which are clearly unsportsmanlike conduct and which officials have been told to eliminate from the game by firm enforcement. In this play, the offender makes one of the specifically forbidden acts, the "throat slash". Referees are reminded of the most recent CFO guidance for announcing these penalties. You are to also state that it is the player's first unsportsmanlike conduct, unless it is his second when you will be announcing his disqualification also.
Just like the finely tuned athletes we chase around the field, we are susceptible to injuries ourselves. Best wishes to Hubert Owens and hope to see him on the field soon. Mr. Owens hung in there for quite a few plays after the injury so as not to disrupt the flow of the game before he took himself out.