Bobref

You could swap Guerin in for Brebeuf. Otherwise, it looks pretty good. Cue the whining about travel in 3...2...1

It’s a mere 200 mi. drive ... one-way. But I don’t mind exchanging a little windshield time for a great high school football atmosphere and a good ribeye!

At The Inferno? Egad, man! You’ve taken leave of your senses!

I swear, one of these days I’m going to wangle an observer’s assignment to a game at LS! The way people talk about that place ... I’ve got to see it for myself.

I was fortunate enough to grow up in Cleveland, my love for football coinciding with the career of the greatest player the game has ever seen, Jim Brown. Then I moved to the Chicago area and was able to watch pretty much the entire career of Walter Payton. But having seen glimpses of Sayers, I’m not so sure they wouldn’t both have been looking up at him had he avoided injury.

Nothing wrong with your reading comprehension skills. A free kick must both go 10 yds. and hit the ground before the kickers are legally entitled to touch the kick, unless it was touched by the receivers first.

Uh oh! https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/29946238/notre-dame-wake-forest-football-game-postponed-seven-more-positive-tests Notre Dame-Wake Forest football game postponed after more positive coronavirus tests The Notre Dame-Wake Forest football game scheduled for Saturday has been postponed after the Irish announced 13 players are in isolation. In a statement Tuesday, Notre Dame said seven players tested positive for coronavirus out of 94 tests done Monday. Combined with testing results from last week, 13 players are in isolation, with 10 in quarantine. As a result, Notre Dame has paused all football-related activities. The two schools are working on a date to reschedule the game. "With student-athlete health and safety our primary focus, we will continue to follow our prevention protocols and ongoing testing procedures," Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly said in a statement. "We managed an increase in positivity rates in August, and the players handled it wonderfully. "We knew COVID would present challenges throughout the season, and we'll always put student-athlete health and safety at the forefront of our decision making. We look forward to resuming team activities and getting back on the playing field." Wake Forest athletic director John Currie said in a statement they are working on rescheduling the game for Oct. 3, an open date the two schools share. "I know everyone involved is saddened to be unable to play this weekend, but based on the circumstances it is the right decision," Currie said in a statement. "We are already discussing options for rescheduling with the ACC and our future opponents, including the possibility of playing on the October 3rd weekend." Notre Dame beat South Florida 52-0 at home last Saturday and opened the season with a win over Duke. This is not the first time this season the Irish have had to pause practices. They also paused for three days last month after five positive results during two rounds of testing. This is now the fourth ACC game impacted because of coronavirus issues.

Ted Cruz is a whack job. Every time I hear someone make dire predictions about what the court is going to be like if nominee X gets confirmed, I think about Earl Warren. One of the greatest and most influential CJs of all time, the leader of the coalition that pushed the court in the opposite direction Eisenhower — who appointed him — anticipated. Eisenhower was quoted as saying of his time as President: “I made two mistakes and both of them are sitting on the Supreme Court. [Referring to Earl Warren and William Brennan]”

Didn’t they play him at WR at Purdue?

It was Desmond Tardy. As I said, I have a very clear mental image of it.

I still have a very clear mental image of the name “Tardy” on the back of his jersey getting smaller and smaller as he accelerated away from me. And that was the 2003 team, so it was 17 yrs. ago.

👍

Now, is that because you doubt the accuracy of his statement that there are many other platforms, and insist on some form of verification? Or is it because you’re interested in those other platforms and want him to do the work of locating them for you? 😂😆

I have searched in vain for anything resembling guidance on this subject in the National Federation officiating publications. We have guidelines for the chain crew and the clock operators, but nothing for the public address system. So, we fall back on the “God Rule,” Rule 1-1-6, which gives the Referee the absolute discretion to rule on anything not specifically covered by the rules. There are a few things the Referee will consider in deciding how to handle this. First and foremost is the question “are both teams being treated the same?” If the answer is that the PA guy is only doing this when the visitors are on offense, I’m going to put a stop to it immediately. And by “immediately,” I mean as soon as I notice it. 😉 If both teams are being treated equally, on the other hand, I’ll let it go (hoping to hear something entertaining) until somebody complains. Then I’ll shut it down. In either case, I’ll make a report to the IHSAA. They want to know when PA announcers go beyond basic information, and start with play by play or critical commentary. The more common “no huddle” offenses do present a potential issue here. The noise should cease when the offense breaks the huddle, since that’s when signal calling can start. If the offense doesn’t huddle, it’s got to stop when the offense starts lining up in formation. As to how you go about it, sometimes you have a direct radio connection to the clock operator, and you relay the message to “knock it off” that way. Other times you relay the message through the head coach on the sideline, who gets it to the coaches in the booth, who pass it along. If the guy persists, you stop the game and locate the representative of game management (often the AD), and that will definitely take care of it. Especially when you mention that the next step is to start assessing 15 yd. penalties against the home team.

That’s not lawyer-speak. It’s “white hat-speak.” 😉

A study commissioned by the NFL for the years 2012-2016 and reported in the American Journal of Sports Medicine showed a 16% increase in lower extremity injuries when playing on synthetic turf. Given the increasing prevalence of synthetic turf fields at the high school level, how concerned should we be? Higher Rates of Lower Extremity Injury on Synthetic Turf Compared With Natural Turf Among National Football League Athletes: Epidemiologic Confirmation of a Biomechanical Hypothesis. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0363546518808499

A loose ball is airborne until it touches the ground. Once it has done so, it is considered grounded. The point is, the distinction between an airborne free kick and a grounded free kick becomes meaningless once a member of the receiving team touches the kick.

All good rules questions that, fortunately, have clear cut answers. Hard to say whether the kickers could have let the ball hit the ground and still recovered it. The ball’s not round, so it bounces funny. Thinking about the play, I’m not sure whether the players were actually coached to try and catch the ball on the fly or not. The crew initially threw the flag and, as soon as that happened, the kickers sent their defense on to the field, so I assume their coaches knew that they weren’t going to be able to keep the ball. As to the other questions, keep in mind the basic rule: The kickers can legally touch a free kick untouched by the receivers only after it has both gone 10 yds. and touched the ground. These requirements can be satisfied in any order. “Airborne” simply means the ball has not yet touched the ground. Once the kick does so, it is considered to be “grounded,” not “airborne.” But whether the kick has been grounded or is still airborne, it can be recovered (but not advanced) by the kickers if it has been touched first by the receivers.

I’ll have to disagree there. An 18 yr. term limit would have meant we would never have gotten Griswold v. Connecticut or Brady v. Maryland from William O. Douglas. There are many, many other examples.

There has been talk of “packing the Court” before, but it goes nowhere. The number on the Court was fixed at 9 over 150 yrs. ago, and has been unchanged since.

Yeah, but there’s that pesky constitution...

I don’t need to speculate, since I got a firsthand account. There was disagreement among the crew members. They conferred. A crew is not a democracy, and while all input should be factored into the decision-making process, ultimately the guy with the white hat has the only vote that counts, and he got it wrong.

Needless to say, the IHSAA frowns on such things. I would not be surprised to hear some discipline was imposed. Ironically, I suppose he was the one who read the mandatory IHSAA pregame announcement about sportsmanship and respect for the officials over the PA.

No question. They play no one lower than a 4A, and those are no cream puffs: New Prairie, Hobart, Lowell.

If the NFL is like college or high school, it’s not a foul to have a pass hit an ineligible. It’s only a foul if the ineligible muffs, bats or catches the pass.