FAIL 2, SYMPATHY 1

Don’t officials have any discretion in how they assess a penalty like the one mentioned above? If a player threw a ball in the vicinity of another player, obviously taunting that person, I can see why the rule would be enforced. I saw only a small replay, but from that it seemed it was a moment of complete joy for that kid.

The excitement is what makes CB the great sport that it is.

Just my two cents…

I’m with blon. They should not have made that call. The situation was clearly not unsportsmanlike, and the refs should have realized that.

That being said, UW should have executed better on the PAT. They had to know (didn’t they?) BYU was sending everyone after it. The Cougars even called a timeout before the kick. Shouldn’t the combination of 15 yard penalty+game deciding kick+opponent timeout be a clue that BYU is sending the house?

The point is: don’t give them the option. They have enough ways to screw up the game as is.

RE: #1 (discretion)

Yes, they do have discretion. The Mayor Kyle T. King (in his best lawya’) explained the text of the rule and makes a good case for discretion right about here:
http://www.andthevalleyshook.com/2008/9/6/608971/byu-28-washington-27

#3
Agreed.

My favorite Wagers moment to date was when he lectured Brian Mimbs for faking the fall after a punt against Auburn last year, an occurence that happens on every punt where someone even directs a mean stare towards a punter.

I’m in agreement on the bogosity of the call in the Wash-BYU game, I blame the rule more than the ref, but I wouldn’t have made that call in that situation.

I did see a horse-collar tackle called. I think it was in the tOSU-Ohio game. There is a small chance it was SDSU against Notre Dame. If the latter it must have been against SDSU, cuz the Irish were barely tackling anybody.

#3

Much like government and any other bureaucracy, I’m assuming once a stupid rule like that is made, it probably won’t be taken out any time soon. The only hope is giving the officials some discretion and letting them use their intelligence to make a call.

Intelligent official. An oxymoron?

Maybe it’s an angles thing, but we didn’t see a flagged horse collar tackle all weekend that we can remember

there was one in the ND/SDSU suckfest by the SDSU punter (I think).

Whenever this subject comes up I am reminded of Chris Fowler circa 1992. Commenting on the new anti-taunting rule he asked rhetorically if in the future we might look back on the 1991 Cotton Bowl with fond memories. (Texas fans excepted)

#10

No problem. We’ve erased that game from our collective memory.

Could Not Resist Dept:

The Ref was a racist Notre Dame fan….which is redundant….of course…..

SKLM, feeling frisky and throwing bombs with regularity today. RACK HIM.

I think this picture was photoshopped. You can see the ball’s shadow right underneath number 4 for BYU.

It looks like the football is chopped in half right where number 79 for UW is standing in the background.

Two quick points:

1. Yes, that penaltyon Locker was every bit as horse-shitty as the room has noted. When Barry Switzer and Jimmy Johnson unite to call someone an idiot on national TV, and the entire nation nods in the affirmative, you know that it was a major screw-up. And a 35-yarder is significantly easier to block than a 20-yarder (the trajectory of the kick is lower and the whip of the leg is a bit longer to get the needed distance)

2. Even granting that far more kicks than you think will look that scarily-close to being blocked from a similar angle as that photo, jeez louise, that’s four and possibly five guys in position to get a piece of the ball for BYU. Even sending all 11, there should be no more than two guys unblocked from the far outside. Hideous special teams execution.

But going back to the main point, I think college football is in dire need of a “common sense” rule. As in, a crappy personal-foul call can be overturned by the crew chief invoking that the penalty defies all common sense. There was a similar, albeit harmless, 15-yard unsportsmanlike penalty assessed on Ball State QB Nate Davis during the game against Navy Friday night. After picking up a first down on a 12-yard scramble, Davis gave the ball a little spin as he got up. He wasn’t talking to anyone or looking at any of the opposing players, in fact, he was headed back to the huddle. After the replay was shown, both ESPN announcers (Sean McDonough and Chris Spielman) both essentially said something to the effect of: “they gave him 15 yards for THAT??!!”

BSU ended up scoring on the drive anyways, so it didn’t matter except in the final stats, but it would have been on par with the Washington call had it impacted the outcome.

The celebration rule was put in place to avoid fights caused by taunting or delay of the game. That was not the case here. Rhetorically, can you taunt BYU? Shouldn’t that be a factor?

/would have loved to see a game between Miami (in their prime) and BYU

Les Miles woulda gone for 2.

@ALGator

That’s not the shadow of the ball, that’s the shadow of a football-shaped malignant tumor on #4’s arm. He’s got two weeks to live, asshole.

I remember an early 1990’s Miami at BYU game that BYU won and I think Miami was ranked #1 (it was early in the season). I also remember Colorado and BYU getting into a bench clearing brawl in a bowl game in about 1988 or so, supposedly touched off by some choice racial remarks by the BYU side.

I’ve gotta go with “bad rule, good call.” He threw the ball thirty feet in the air (estimating, since replays show it falling back down onto his shoulder about two seconds later), which is a clear violation of that rule no matter how many times Mark May calls it “a little flip over his shoulder” in indignant tones.

Having said that — he wasn’t trying to show up the other team, he wasn’t doing a choreographed routine with the rest of his O-line, and it was a huge moment in the game.

9-2-2c must go!

1990, little Ty Detmer led BYU to the victory. I think it was something like 31-30. Great game.

I’m really starting to resent how sorry that episode is making me feel for Willingham. Dammit.

Holly,

When you start feeling sympathetic for Ty just remember that he is paid a large sum of money to play golf and lose football games.

I’m trying! I’m going to feel bad for Locker instead. That was such a great moment, until the damn ball hit the ground behind him.

Feel bad for Locker having to play for Willingham.

That touchdown was scored with two seconds left. BYU had been flagged and penalized 15 yards on the kickoff for celebration on the blocked kick.

Adding to the tragedy was the fact that Washington then recovered the ensuing pooch onside kick in BYU territory for an extra-long GW Redemption FG try or Hail Mary shot with one second left…but were offside.

I think we can all agree that Locker is to be pitied, at least until he’s drafted in the first round and gets a gigantic signing bonus.

There was a horsecollar call at the ND-SDSU “game” on Saturday. The penalty was specifically “unsportsmanlike conduct” I think.

OCD Phil continues to demonstrate the lack of branches on his family tree. The horse collar was in fact called in ND/SDSU when the punter pulled down Armando Allen as he was going out of bounds on a kick return. However, the ND defense performed pretty well given how long they were on the field, and actually tackled well, for the most part, during the game. ND still has big problems but Phil is a hair pulling idiot.

I invoke that all schools that are playing cupcakes this weekend should, in honor of Jake Locker, do the same celebration every time they score. Hell, punt that bitch in the stands. I wonder : Would he, the West Coast Tebow, have gotten penalized if he would have crushed the ball and made it explode with his bare hands?
But looking at the above pic, I bet ya that is the example they use in the Urban Dictionary for the word
“Jailbreak”……or that they actually use “special” people from the Special Olympics on their Special Teams, I could be wrong…..

I’m with Joe: bad rule, good call. The rule isn’t discretionary; the refs don’t have a choice. It is a rule, not a standard.

If I tackle Mike Vick using his facemask, most would agree that I committed no morally blameworthy conduct, and we all know that my team and I would be penalized 15 yards. It’s the same here.

The rule prohibits throwing the ball in the air and whatnot, it does not prohibit throwing the air while being a jerk .

We don’t sweat it out there on the fields, we’re not in there breaking down game tape, reviewing our recruiting targets, we don’t have access to the grinding day-to-day work making up the bone marrow of a distinguished football body. We don’t see all the stuff that goes into those four hours on Saturday, right?

Neither does Ty Willingham.

/not too proud to pick low fruit
//shocked he got here first

The rule might be rediculous, but a good coach coaches his players to not give the ref a chance to make that call.

(Good coaches also make sure their teams score more points than Cal Poly.)

The horse collar rule is bullshit anyways and should be removed. Its football dammit – a physcial game.

I’m clearly not a 5-er, but it seems to me that it ought to be possible to get some sort of black-letter law in the rulebook stating that no celebration may be flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct unless it is plainly premeditated, choreographed, or directed at the opposing team or fans.

And just for fun, make it a reviewable call…by the announcers, not the officials.

(Yes, I’m still extremely bitter about the Swamp Shoulder Shake of ’05. I very nearly had my manservant throw my gin rickey at the television in outrage.)

Lost in all this is that at best the extra point would have tied the game, merely allowing Willingham to lose the game in OT instead.

Better his men got to the showers early than prolong the inevitable any further…

I am a UW alum, so this hit a little close to home for me. I understand the rule is there, but aren’t all calls judgement calls? Didn’t the ref have to decide how high is too high to throw the ball in the air? As shaky as the UW kicking game is, we may not have made the chip shot extra point, and the chances of a win in OT were probably less than 50% as well, but it seemed like a pretty poor time for the ref to make that call. One more thought; would anyone have been questioning the ref’s thought process if he hadn’t made the call, or would we all have (more than likely) been excited at the chance to watch some more of a pretty good game?

You didn’t quite finish your sentence. I will finish it off inside parentheses…

“When you start feeling sympathetic for Ty just remember that he is paid a large sum of money (by two colleges) to play golf and lose football games.”

This is the actual Horse Collar rule:
“All players are prohibited from grabbing the inside back collar of the shoulder pads or jersey, or the inside collar of the side of the shoulder pads or jersey, and immediately pulling the runner down. This does not apply to a runner who is inside the tackle box or to a quarterback who is in the pocket.”

It’s not a horse collar if the player isn’t hauled down immediately. I haven’t found an interpretation of the last sentence about runners and quarterbacks. Does the pulling down part not apply, or does the entire rule not apply to them?

J in SD @29. Wow, are you cranky or what? If you want to think that the Irish defense looked good then you are entitled to your opinion. An interesting thing to note is that the leading tackler for ND was a defensive back. That either means that the DL and LB’s are missing tackles or lots of passes are being completed. And I don’t consider either of those to be signs of a good defense myself.

Is it in the rule book? Yes. Should it have been called? No. I’m not a UW fan by the way.

They have a choice whether or not to make a call like that. They almost always have a choice, if not, then illegal contact / PI / holding would be called on 75% of football plays, and football would suck.

Still, UW did have a chance to make it all moot and didn’t block on the extra point, so BYU still deserved the win.

Basically the horse collar rule doesnt apply to QBs in the pocket or RBs running between the tackles, so the DE that is getting blocked around behind the QB can still reach out and yank him to the ground by the collar. As far as the “immediately” pulling the player down, if the defender grabs the collar but rides the player down (say on his back) then its not supposed to be called.

To Brian@40,

SDSU pretty much threw the ball the entire game – 15 rushes to 59 pass attempts.

Notre Dame still has a very long ways to go to beat anyone in the top 25, though….

Brian O’Blivion has it right. Yes, what Locker did was against the letter of the law, but just as an experiment I went ahead and looked at YouTube highlights of college touchdowns from the last couple of years, and about half of them had actions after the TD that could have been considered against the specific wording of Rule 9, Section 2, Article 2 (which actually, technically forbids doing anything with the ball other than handing it to an official or placing it on the dead spot). I saw guys flipping the ball over their shoulders, flipping it forward away from the refs, doing little mini-spikes into the ground, and so forth.

Did all of these actions draw flags from the refs, being technically illegal dead-ball actions? No, because those refs were smart and realized that a penalty should not be called unless a celebration is excessively long or in the opponent’s face. This BYU-UW officiating crew, to put it mildly, was not smart.

the celebration rule is just another step in the “pussification” of football… next thing you know they tear down the scoreboard