JustRules

It's not the bad votes that kill you. It's the fact you don't have all the extra friendly votes the crews that generally advance get. Those crews get just as many bad votes and others. They just get a lot of extra 5s from people they knew through a variety of legitimate sources. Your bad votes may keep you in the first round rather than the second round, but it's not what is preventing you from advancing deep into the tournament. The single most common denominator for the crews that advance is deep advancement (especially by the referee) into the basketball tournament. Those guys are working in HSs throughout the year and once they start to get momentum in basketball it starts to improve their football rating. We call it the coach's vote, but the ballot is actually sent to the AD. They have a lot of say as well. I encourage all crews to check with the IHSAA as well (not now but when things quiet down). I've heard crews inquire about the general rating of the "unknown" crews. More often than not those votes are 4s and 5s. Some schools just like to vote for everyone and when they do it's usually positive. Don't diminish the value of those votes.

I believe it's also being offered a spot on the team. Others may still come and try out, but those extended an invite are being asked to join the team. No different than D3. They still have students "commit" to the school, but it's a very different kind of commitment than scholarship offers.

Warsaw is #3 in their sectional and may have been #4 behind Snider. They are only separated by 4 points. Many of the 5A/6A sectionals are so close to begin with it's less of an indicator. In that sectional Homestead is currently 86..31, Carroll is 81.28, Warsaw is 74.36, and Snider is 70.36. Perry is still well below Ben Davis and Southport in their sectional and 10 points ahead of Tech. I don't know where they were before the update. They only moved up 1 spot in the class from 31 or 32 to 30 which is not significant. With only 4 teams in most sectionals 5A and 6A are less applicable to this analysis. Several of the 1v3 matchups came from these classes.

There's a good chance a percentage of Chatard students live in the IPS district. They may have been a part of the CYO program and attend a diocese parish, but if they attended their assigned public school they could have gone to Tech.

Good point. I'm using the current numbers on Harrell's site which probably are current. I would think they would change significantly though. It's possible #2 and #3 were close going in and swapped places after the first two rounds. If they were that close the general principle still applies. If someone saved the final Sagarin ratings following week 9 it would be interesting to see how much these trends still held.

NCAA started using that philosophy/rule 3-4 years ago so it wasn't unprecedented. They are guided to do this if an incident involves most of the players from both teams. It does result in the ejection of any player who had received a UNS earlier in the game or receives one later.

Of the 48 sectional championship games (including LCC in sectional 42), 39 of them have the #1 seed playing in the sectional final. The 3 that aren't include Floyd Central (lost to Jeffersonville), Kankakee Valley (lost to Culver Acadmies), and Eastbroo (lost to Tipton). The last two were very close in Sagarin rating so weren't big upsets. Floyd Central was a 20-point favorite. Of the 48 sectional final games, 25 are 1 v. 2 and 13 more are 1 vs. 3. Looing at 1A-4A there are 32 sectional finals and only 3 of them involve teams not in the top half of the sectional per Sagarin. They are 18 Logansport (5), 23 Martinsville (5), and 30 Washington (6). I didn't do the same for 5A and 6A because in those sectionals #3 is in the bottom half and often a very good team. With all the great games this week this is what a seeded tournament could look like each year for the sectional final. Sagarin isn't always right on a mirco level but it proves to be fairly accurate again from a macro level.

Technically it's treated as it was at the time of a kick. It could the continuation of a legal Kick. It could also be continuation of a backward pass (nothing substantially different in this case). It's extremely unlikely that it could also be the continuation of a legal forward pass but that would involve kicking the pass while it's in flight. It's so unlikely it's not worth discussing. The biggest critical one though is illegally kicking a ball that is still a kick. Let's say the K attempted to punt the ball, but it was blocked. It's still rolling around behind the LTG and a member of K then kicks it from the ground down field where it's recovered by another K player beyond the LTG. If you treat this as a loose ball ball following an illegal kick treated as a fumble then you would give K a first down. But it's a loose ball following an illegal kick that was a continuation of a kick is still a kick so it would be first touching by K and R is awarded a new series at the spot of touching. Then K's foul for an illegal kick could be tacked on from there.

They do have a beautiful campus near Mass Ave and great football facilities. It's one of the best environments in Marion County and would be awesome if the stadium was full. Schools with a large number of low income students have different challenges than most people realize if they have never been involved with them. Tech can be successful, but it takes a great coaching staff and non-pandemic circumstances.

Agreed. I look at it if the front line players would be in danger of getting hit while fielding the ball in the air then it's a pop-up kick. If it's coming down well before any K player would get to it then it's fine. If it pops up and would land 15-20 yards downfield then it's probably fine. The challenge is you can't wait that long to make the decision since it's a foul immediately. But that's a good way to understand when the foul occurs.

NCAA passed a rule regarding the pop-up kick a year or two prior to NFHS. The difference is NCAA treats it as if it has not hit the ground. This means the returner has full protection to complete the catch and they can fair catch it. The ball remains live. We had already referred to this as a pop-up kick and what you call a pop-up kick we referred to as a pooch kick.

There is no halo rule. It only states you have to give him an opportunity to catch the ball, but you can hit him legally as soon as he does. Your BSB reference is from the NFL. Each level has their own rules and some are very different. In NFHS BSB only has to be forceful contact who doesn't have an opportunity to see it coming and defend himself. They are often going in opposite directions and the blocker is often moving back toward their own goal line, but those are not mentioned in the rule.

My understanding is this player tested positive but they suspected it may not be valid so they did a different test and he's now tested negative. The first test was a false positive. Many of these tests were developed very quickly and not completely validated so there will be false results. My question is how do they not know the first test was accurate and the second test is not?

I've always seen it as an easy way to reduce risk even just a little bit. You can't get away from players contacting each other during the play, but you can get away from players contacting each other after the game. We wear masks on the field before and after the game and during halftime but take them off during the game. It's not a huge difference, but it's an easy way to control when we can reduce exposure (never eliminate).

In most of our games the player on the field as the clock expires are shaking hands before they go to their hash and wave at the opposing team. We did have one game that is a fairly heated rival both teams headed directly to their respective locker rooms on either end of the stadium. I'm assuming there was an agreement by coaches prior to the game to do this.

A pretty good indication of why the regular season is largely meaningless. A team can give up a game or to quarantine because it has no impact on the post season. That is actually a positive for this particular season, but this is a unique year. I'm curious to see if schools will be as strict with quarantines if it would affect the tournament. If anyone is close to a team and willing to share, have any of the athletes who quarantined tested positive during their quarantine? If not the risk for those athletes to continue in the tournament may be very low. I'll be curious to see.

Further evidence there isn't a huge difference in the top of one class to the next. Congrats to South Putnam.

Per Robert there were 140 crews who applied and 122 received 1st round assignments. 13% is pretty close to 15% I guess. If you've worked 2 rounds you are still eligible for a sectional final so not getting a game this year has no bearing on next year. That message was more about a crew opting out being considered a new crew next year and starting the process over.

Observer feedback while helpful to the crew to improve has little or no direct impact on advancement. Crews get good observer feedback and don't advance beyond the first or second round. Other crews get negative reviews and work much deeper. Factors mentioned such as crew and previous tournament experience could hurt if the crew is very limited on those points. Most crews max out in those areas at least against the crews they are "competing" with. The biggest factor for most crews is the coach/school vote. There is no way Dirty D's crew knows their vote. They may know a few coaches who voted positively for them, but they don't know the full results until after the season. The number of votes is also a big factor. The crews who advance deep get a large number of votes which would explain his observation that a crew received negative votes from all schools in a sectional. If they received 100+ votes the number of positive votes would shadow the negative votes. If your crew only received a 10-15 votes then a negative vote will have a much bigger impact. It's a bad system, but it's our system for better or worse. The others have provided good advice, especially control what you control. Based on the way you are asking the question I'm guessing you are either a new official or your crew is a new crew. That likely means you have limited crew experience. That can be difficult to overcome as well. The top 3 officials by experience need to average 12 years of experience to get maximum points. Limited tournament experience would keep you from advancing to the second round, but there are several crews who have only worked 1 round so they are your main competition. Keep working at being a good official and crew and try not to let the ranking process determine your worth. Continue to watch video and ask those outside the crew to review your video and provide feedback.

Warren Central quarantined 40 players and their head coach in August off of one positive test and another showing symptoms (but eventually tested negative). I think they are taking this more seriously than most.

First, my preference would be a qualifying tournament with seeding. It's the most exciting approach for a tournament. But I also understand why it hasn't happened yet. The random draw doesn't create any more blowouts than seeding would You can have two 3-win teams playing in the first round while two 8-win teams also play in the first round. Both games could be close. But if the 8-win teams play the 3-win teams both are likely blowouts. The 8-win winner could play the 3-win winner in the sectional final in a blowout, but that's one fewer blowout than the current system. The other reason is most coaches and ADs realize they could be that 2 or 3-win team and hoping to draw another 2 or 3-win team in the first round and inject life into their program with a tournament win.

Winning 2 sectionals or a regional in a class is a pretty good indication you are competitive at that level.

If they are doing this to make sure they can play in the tournament, they may be the first team on the draw brackets with a record of 0-0. I'm glad they are getting a chance to try to play!

The way I often explain that is was the action by the defender and attempt to block a kick or execute a tackle? If the former then it is roughing the kicker because he obviously recognized it was going to be kicked. If it's the latter then he expected him to continue to be a runner and was trying to tackle him. Unless it's really late it's usually better to pass on it.

No foul for doing this. Even if the offense tells us they are taking a knee I tell the defense to play smart because if they muff the snap it's a live ball that can be recovered. Especially at the end of the first half you need to be ready for this kind of play.