JustRules

Many of the D3 schools use athletics as a way to recruit students. When my son was a senior we were talking to Hanover and the admissions person said 45% of their incoming class each year are on one of the athletics teams. The D3 schools will try to get 75 freshmen every year knowing half of them will not return their sophomore year but hopefully a large percentage like the school enough to stay at the school. It's a good recruiting tool for those schools.

He only has 1 year left and to be honest I was surprised he still had that. Seems like he's been there awhile already. Good luck to him wherever he goes. He's had a solid career at IU. Maybe he's finishing his undergrad and wants to try something else for grad school. I don't believe he's a high NFL target so he should enjoy his college career as much as possible.

Yes, but he was suspended and they had an interim coach all season.

The Packers had a good team this year as evidenced by their 13-3 record, but they never seemed elite. Kudos for them making the NFC Championship game especially with a rookie head coach. I expect they'll challenge again next week.

Correct with one minor semantic question. The foul before and now is actually illegal formation. What changed is the number that triggers it. Essentially you've always needed at least 7 on the line and no more than 4 in the backfield assuming you have 11 players. The previous rule focus on the 7 on the line. The bad part of that is a team only sent out 10 players and the missing player was someone on the line, they committed a foul even though they were at the disadvantage. The primary thing the rule change last yea did was make that no longer a foul. As long as you have no more than 4 in the backfield you are legal. If you warned them on this once and they continued to do it, it would definitely be a foul.

The warning between plays is usually only given once. If they do it again whether it's the next play or 3 series later it will be a foul. If they are well behind the snapper it will be a foul the first time. Warnings are only given if it's close.

You realize almost every other state has had a mercy rule for a long time? We were one of the last ones. Those states seem to be doing just fine. Having worked many of those huge blowouts there wasn't much accomplished during the second half of those games. The mercy rule at least gives the players an opportunity to get some snaps in. By my experience this year it was 2-3 drives per team. The coaches didn't mind and the players still seemed to have fun regardless of what side they were on. It maybe gets me home 15-20 minutes earlier so not a major difference. This was 100% coach driven by the IFCA. If you have a beef you have it with them.

Common sense would not allow that to happen in a mercy rule situation. How to handle it would be at the referee's discretion. If it was me after the second DOG I would actually stop the clock and tell the head coach he does it again intentionally he will be flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct. This would be done using what we often call the "God" rule. It's to be applied very sparingly (I've never done it that I recall), but it's there to allow the referee to rule on things not specifically covered in the rules. There's a very good chance Robert Faulkens is going to get a phone call too if he does it again. I'm guessing he'll get the message and not do it again.

And the play clock in football is not intended to be as precise as the shot clock in basketball. I would not use that for comparison purposes. DE made a correct point for all levels. Check the game clock, when it hits 0 look at the ball and if it's not moving immediately then flag it. Later in a game that's decided take a deep breath or two. Flagging DOG should be rare and obviously delayed.

I assumed by running clock he meant the clock was running when the DOG happened, not a mercy rule situation. In a mercy rule situation the clock wouldn't stop when the foul happened.

Huge improvement. For the 1 chance out of 1000 a team comes back from 35 points down at halftime I'm fine with leaving it as is. Half our games had a running clock the entire second half. Another one started with 9 minutes left in the 3rd only because the winning team missed 2 extra points in the first half. Both teams still played hard through the second half and the winning team got some valuable snaps for backups. It did exactly what it was intended to do. I will say we had a couple clock operators who "forgot" to stop the clock after the try and before the kickoff. None of the coaches complained about that.

I'm a huge fan of this idea. I'm familiar with a state that does this and it's a huge success. About half of the schools in their smallest class are co-ops. Some are a couple smaller schools joining a school that could possibly support their own team, but most of them would not exist if not for co-ops.

I believe the clock didn't run prior to the time out like it was supposed to so they had to reset the clock. Once the clock was reset the officials backed out.

Logical and well articulated suggestions. I don't necessarily agree with them, but you bring up good points to support your suggestions. As for the home field part, NCAA (FCS/D2/D3) and NAIA use seeds to determine home field until the finals, but they also limit what teams are allowed to do. It's not as restrictive as IHSAA, but it's similar. They become NCAA/NAIA events but hosted at one school's site.

Many folks were going to be outraged regardless of which way they ruled. That has no impact on the game crew before or after the call. They know it's a no win situation so they just go with what their experience and training have taught them and move on. They have more plays to worry about and after the game have next season to worry about.

Probably right. I didn't get to see the first half but know it went from 14-7 to 49-7 very quickly. That can happen via momentum or domination. Look at the CG-BD game earlier in the season vs. the playoff game. Very different results. I'm told the first game was actually much closer than the score because of a few breaks for CG early in the 3rd quarter. LSU and OU could play again and have a very different outcome.

Look at it this way...the call on the field may have actually been: I'm not 100% certain if it was a catch so I'm going to let replay make the actual decision and not confirm that I think it's a catch. Do you see how that's a different mindset or approach for the replay official?

Clemson winning by that large margin doesn't mean Oklahoma didn't belong. Momentum is a crazy thing. I've seen two teams very closely matched turn into a route because a team got on a roll and everything starts to go their way. I worked a game once where a team was down 7 and inside the 5 about to score with under 2 minutes left in the first half. A turnover turned into a defensive touchdown followed by a quick 3-and-out and another long TD on a fluke play making it a 21-point game at halftime. The leading team gets the ball first in the second half and scores giving them a 28-point lead. In about 5 minutes of clock time a game that was about to be tied turned into a 28-point difference. They went on to win by 42, but the teams were much more closely matched than that. On the field you can tell the different between two teams that are truly 42-points apart and a 42-point game due to major momentum.

Excellent point Mr. Bob! Especially in this case it was such a tight call the same number of people would scream a team was screwed by the call. You could easily argue catch/fumble or incomplete. There is nothing in the rule about number of steps which those arguing for catch are using to justify their position. The key elements of the rule here are time and football act. Because of that you have to watch this replay at full speed. My gut feel the time I saw this live was incomplete. The ball was out very quickly. In slow motion a lot of incomplete passes look complete. I would put this play very much in the "when in doubt" category which the rule clearly states you rule incomplete. The area of the rule book that covers forward/backward also states when in doubt it's forward and incomplete when not caught. It goes on to say though if replay is involved to rule it forward to let it play out. The catch/no catch rule doesn't state that, but the same often applies by philosophy. It's not always easy to overturn an incomplete pass ruling if replay shows it was backward or complete. In this case that can have a huge impact on the role of replay. The covering official is going to do the same thing on the field regardless if he actually rules catch/fumble or let's it play out for replay. They would communicate that decision to the replay official. If it's the former then he's looking at it with the assumption it was a catch and he needs to see something that proves that not to be true. If it's the latter then he's looking at it to make the actual decision of catch/no catch. Those are different thresholds. You could legitimately argue this as a catch or incomplete. It was that close. Based on that neither choice is patently wrong or a team is getting screwed. You could have 100 top officials watch this play and you are probably going to get a 55-45 split and I'm not sure which way they would go. I lean toward incomplete because it was bang bang and it was my initial gut reaction when I saw it live. But I wouldn't tell someone who feels it was a catch they were wrong either. But nobody got screwed by either decision. Ohio State still had a chance to add on to their lead and had an opportunity to stop LSU on that long drive at the end. Even after that they were in striking distance with a chance to win. This call was far from the only reason they lost the game.

This is true but a side impact also is some hires are made not based on ability and experience but on physical appearance. The people working at those levels are still very good officials, but some are moving up much faster because they look the part. They would have benefited from another couple years each of high school and small college football. I think it has had at least a minor impact on the quality of officiating at the NFL and D1 levels.

Pretty sure every school who has ever gone to turf has done this. Everyone I've ever talked with has said the payoff is 8-10 years. You pay more up front but your annual expense is much less. This is true especially when you factor in the ability to use it much often during the year. It could even be a revenue source for schools.

Agreed. This view is a talk to especially on the 2nd play of the game. They do it again this far back and it's a flag. They were warned and asked to be moved up. If they are further back than this it could be a flag the first time.

As an observer I think we have a few people who define "forum traffic" as trolls who like to stir up trouble simply for the sake of creating angry responses and conflict for conflict sake. Others like to have intelligent discussions and debate. The people in the latter group keep getting drug into conversations with people in the former group, but the people in the former group have no interest in being a part of the latter group so they try to bring every conversation back into the former group. They feel they are doing a service to the site by generating "forum traffic." This is not unique to GID. I see it on other forums as well.

I've thought they would be a good place for Spegal since they still do run a full back and the full back is also given touches. Their current OC was a bigger running back similar to Spegal. He ran over the Gophers when NDSU beat them in 2007. They have won their last 6 FBS games including 3 Big XII and 2 B1G teams. They aren't Ohio State/Alabama level good, but they would be competitive with the middle of the B1G with their current roster. If you watched the game Saturday former Decatur Central QB Bryce Jefferson started for Illinois State. Late in the 1st half he threw an interception to Michael Tutsie from Warren Central.

I would love someone who has had to financially justify it to share their results. When I've talked with the decision makers on this (various ADs when we've been working games) they said it was pretty easy to justify over a 10-year period, especially when you factor in the ability to use it much more often. And that doesn't include the washing expense or equipment replacement for all the officials who can't get mud stains out of their uniforms or have to buy new shoes because theirs are muddy beyond belief.