If you missed yesterday’s conference expansion post, I’m responding to a few of the pressing issues that have popped up in college football discussions over the past couple of weeks. First up today:
That taunting rule. I’ve come to think of the debate surrounding the NCAA’s decision to potentially revoke touchdowns for preliminary celebration as FIREHORSE vs. Tony Barnhart. It’s fun that way.
Also, that way we can pretend there’s actual debate when, really, Barnhart is a lone loon spitting into a wind that represents the entire rest of the college football universe. He’s the only writer I ever came across that wrote anything like this:
That is why the NCAA rules committee is correct in changing the rule so that a taunting/unsportsmanlike foul that is committed during a touchdown play negates the score.
“Oh, they are taking points off the board!” I heard someone cry on the radio.
No, the points are never on the board unless you have an excited scoreboard keeper who is not paying attention. What all of us who follow college football want is for the rules to be consistent and for the officials to apply them consistently. If a block in the back or a hold occurs at the five-yard line with a player running in for the score, the score does not count. The penalty is marked off from the spot of the foul.
Same thing here. If a player at the five-yard line slows down and looks back to a defender and shows him the ball and taunts, then that is where the foul occurred. Previously, the other team had the option of taking the penalty on the extra point or the ensuing kickoff. That’s inconsistent.
So now that rule is consistent with other penalties.
Here’s the weird thing: I sorta … kinda … half-heartedly … agree with him.
Not with the general thesis of the post or the “NCAA got it right” headline. But that a particularly egregious taunting flag should result in the nullification of the score. Yes, surely by next week I’ll be yelling at those damn kids to get off my lawn, but I still believe that some scintilla of sportsmanship is important enough to our sport that a player who crosses the line between celebrating his success to mocking his opponent deserves to have a touchdown taken away. (To be fair, I can’t even remember the last time I saw a celebration like this.)
Here’s the problem: that’s how I feel in theory. Unlike Barnhart, I have absolutely zero interest in seeing this theory put into practice. In theory, officials are able to apply the half-ounce of common sense necessary to distinguish between the kind of taunting that’s flag-worthy and the kind that’s innocuous fun. In theory, officials would understand that whatever the rulebook might say, revoking a score for celebration should be treated as a nuclear option only to be used in the event of the most flagrant of violations. In theory, the NCAA should write the rulebook under the assumption that officials should be treated like adults.
But we know that especially where celebration penalties are concerned, officials shouldn’t be treated like adults. We’ve tried that, and what we got was penalties for Jake Locker throwing a ball in the air and A.J. Green … actually, I’m still not sure what A.J. Green in that LSU game last year. The officials, they have shown us over the past few seasons, must be treated like children. Or more specifically, like the teenager headed off to college who’s asking his parents for a credit card. You can talk about using it “only in emergencies” ’til you’re blue in the face, but you know it’s going towards a 1 a.m. pizza delivery sooner rather than later.
In the same way, the NCAA can’t approve this rule without knowing it’s going to wind up at the center of a firestorm of controversy in a matter of months. If I had even a mustard seed’s worth of faith in officials to apply it property, I’d support it. Which is why what FIREHORSE should be enraged about isn’t the rule itself–it’s the state of officiating itself that makes it such a colossal mistake.
Rescheduling. If you stick to Auburn sites and only rarely venture out into the rest of the SEC bloggitysphere, you’ve missed an enjoyable dust-up over over the prospect of the SEC accommodating Alabama’s request to rearrange the league’s 2010 football schedule. As you’ve probably heard by now, the Tide faces six teams this year that will be coming off of a bye week. They’ve asked to not face so many. This recently drew responses one two three four from around the league and counter-responses one two (along with tons in various comment threads) from the ‘Bama faction.
The peculiar thing about this argument is that both sides are, essentially, correct.
Because should the SEC rearrange the schedule for the Tide? Hell no they shouldn’t. The schedules have been in place for months and in some nonconference cases, years. It’s now 3 and a half months before the season starts. So we’re going to inconvenience not one but two teams who have done nothing wrong just because one other team thinks it might be at a disadvantage that might not even be there? Uh, no. Why should Arkansas or Auburn have to bear the burden of the SEC’s mistake? They shouldn’t, and they’re well within their rights to have told the league (and the Tide) to screw off and come back next year. Alabama fans can (and should) hold a grudge against the league office for never taking a step back and saying “whoa, this might be not fair,” but that’s a made bed they’re just going to have to lie in.
That said: should Alabama have gone to the league and complained? Of course they should have. What did they have to lose? Let’s say the league follows the proper course of action and says no for 2010; that hardly makes anything worse for Alabama. And the league (and conference A.D.’s) have already unanimously agreed to ensure this problem won’t rear its ugly head in future seasons. Which only the most fervent of Tide-haters would argue shouldn’t be the case; maybe bye weeks aren’t that big a deal, but if it was Auburn in the Tide’s situation, I’d want Jay Jacobs raising some bloody hell. It’s fair to call the Tide out for whining, because there’s no a defending national champion can complain about the difficulty of its schedule and have it not be a whine, but it’s also only telling half the story if you don’t note that the Tide would have been idiots not to get their whine on. It’s a smart whine, a whine with purpose, and I don’t begrudge them for it.
If the SEC does cave and switch a 2010 game around, the problem won’t be the squeaky wheel–it’ll be the incompetents in the league office who made it squeak in the first place and then greased it just because it wouldn’t shut up.
I feel for the Tahd with their schedule….
but can’t quite reach them….
I think there is also some blame that goes upon Alabama’s athletic department as well. This is something that should have been caught even earlier and the adjustments could have been made earlier.
I doubt very much the SEC would touch Auburn’s bye week; that would be a flaming hot kettle they would not want to touch.
SEC officials also can’t seem to apply the half-ounce of common sense necessary to tell the difference between bammer OL blocking and bammer OL pulling and tackling.
For a full 7-8 games at the end of last season.
Not once.
That doesn’t mean that just because we support a holding penalty “in theory” and the theory is horrifyingly put into practice by the SEC refs, that we do not have a need for the holding penalty.
The taunting penalty thing is ridiculous, no matter how you look at it.
So does that mean when a baseball player hits a home run he still has to run the bases full speed, since you can’t slow down on your way into the end zone? Does that mean windmill dunks are going to be taken off the board, since it’s a bit of celebration and showmanship on its way to a score?
I hate it. But I already hated celebration penalties. So now I just hate it more.
As for Bama — You know, they might have actually gained some respect from someone somewhere had they taken the cards they were dealt with like men. Then maybe privately after the season told Slive and the gang to try not to do it next year please thanks. But no, they didn’t, cause they’re Bama.
(P.S. I kinda have a secret grudge against EDSBS. I remember way back when they linked my first YouTube video, the Eazy E one, and complained about how it didn’t have enough recent footage, and also complained that it had A-Day footage. Like, wow, make up your mind. He also compared Gene Chizik to AIDS…)
Kenny, I’m not really worried about this year. Hell, the T-town News story from today (or yesterday?) admitted the SEC’s pretty much out of options. Just pointing out that ‘Bama can’t really have any gripes if it doesn’t happen … as you happen to agree with.
AO, as I tried to point out and maybe didn’t make clear enough, I think there’s a big difference between a celebration and taunting the opponent–I’m perfectly fine with the former, but made a little nauseous by the latter. The kind of play I’m envisioning that would be worth taking a score off the board isn’t remotely analogous to a windmill dunk or a trot around the basepaths after a home run. It’s more like that NFL player from way back that pretended to count out a player he’d just concussed.
As for keeping ‘Bama’s request private, what are the odds the press would ever let them do that? I don’t know all the ins and outs, but it’s the sort of thing that probably has to through official bureaucatic channels–channels that are going to be made public sooner or later.
I think the complaining about taunting is childish. The NCAA should realize that these are men playing a man’s sport and that they can handle a high step or two without having a nervous.
To paraphrase what I tell my 9 year old when she says others are saying mean things to her:
Getting hit by Bynes may break my spine but having someone slow down and point at me on the way to the end zone will never hurt me.
^^^^ that should say “breakdown” after “nervous.”
Well I guess that just goes to your point that we all know the officials aren’t going to use it right. They’re not just going to flag taunting, they’re going to flag the innocent celebrations as well.
And, I don’t know, I’m not convinced that they couldn’t have dealt with it in a more private manner. From all I’ve seen, what they did was less of a request and more of an outcry. It’s like one of those things where they knew the office wasn’t going to be able to do anything about it, so they made sure the world would see how they’ve been wronged. I don’t know, it just seems less noble to me than if they tried to handle it behind closed doors. I’m not saying that that’s the standard or anything, or even that we would have done that, but, like I said, they could’ve gained some respect from somebody if they did it right. It’s just that Bama is the most likely school in the SEC to handle it the way Bama is. They talk the big game, think they’re bigger and badder than everyone else, but then when the schedule shakes down the wrong way, they don’t want the bigger and badder schedule, they want to be treated like everyone else.
Honestly I’m just surprised bama is so willing to give up a ready-made excuse for a loss. This just doesn’t seem like the great red satan i know…
the most overrated thing in all of college football is sportsmanship. i wanna see kids acting like the 1987 Miami Hurricanes. give me dancing and foolishness. give me fun. i hate the taunting rules in the NFL and NCAA.
Oh joy, jrsuicide… just what college football needs. A buncha Muhammad Ali wannabes. That’ll grow the sport for sure.
(Lord help us all.)
I have not been following this debate very closely, but I would like to see an example of what the NCAA expects would draw a flag that would take away a score. I cannot remember seeing any overt celebrations before someone was in the endzone. Would it apply to Keeny Irons’s TC run against Wash St where he slowed down, the had to sprint at the end? Tre Smith’s summersault into the endzone against Florida on the blocked punt? Could it apply to kickers raising their arms before the kick was deemed good? I think the main problems is that it is a rule that gives the refs a lot of lee-way if players are not just running, head down, towards the endzone. A bit like pulling someone over at midnight for “failure to signal a lane change.” That might be a traffic offense, but we all know the reason for the stop was suspecion of DUI. It is good to give police some leeway, but maybe not the SEC refs!
Well TigerX, since neither the Irons nor the Smith play drew a flag in the first place, the new rule making an on-field taunt/unsportsmanlike conduct remove a score wouldn’t have applied since neither play was ruled a taunt/unsportsmanlike conduct.
Along the same lines, I have been disapointed by the facemask rule change last year.
I understand the line is tough to draw between a full on head twister and an incendtal, I have always thought that an incedental facemask that posed no danger to the ball carrier unecessarily negated too many great defensive plays.
Instead they made even the most innocent touch of the grill a 15 yard PF. OVERKILL.
TigerX, I’m assuming it’s the traditional definition for excessive celebration. God help us all.
Alex P, supposedly officials are intended to simply not flag “incidental” facemasks. That, of course, never happens, so now we’ve just got facemask = 15 yards.
Another instance of the NCAA trying to treat the officials like adults, and discovering it doesn’t work.
I feel like I should have some disclaimer here noting that the officials do a thankless job very well the overwhelming majority of the time, which they do. But man alive, the throwing of flags that DON’T have to be thrown drives me up a wall.