On side kick question

nt6m

11-man fan
The ball only travels 7 yards before going out of bounds on the 38. From my reading of the rule, the receiving team should stil get the 5 yard penalty. Last night there was no 5 yards awarded. The ball was placed where it went out of bounds. I wanted to know if there was an exception to the 5 yards.
 
No, if a free kick (kickoff) is untouched by Team B (receiving team) and goes out of bounds there are four possibilities, however only two are really ever options.

1) decline the penalty, ball would be placed at the OOB spot, Team B 1/15
2) rekick, after a five yard penalty
3) assess the 5 yard penalty from the OOB spot, B 1/15
4) team B 1/15 from a spot 20 from team A restraining line (typically the 30, unless Team A restraining line had been relocated by a previous penalty)

So, option 1 is really never given, but it is an option.

Option 2 is always given.

Option 3 should only be given if the OOB spot is more advantageous than option 4. (Ex. if the ball goes OOB at a spot >= Team B's 26 yard line, since after penalty enforcement the ball would be beyond the Team B 30.

Option 4 should only be given if the ball goes OOB at a spot <= 25.

(Note, there is a distinction between option 3 & 4, you can't have both, ie ball placed at the 30 and then 5 yard penalty, unless the ball went OOB @ the team B 30)
 
fencewire":32hpevxf said:
No, if a free kick (kickoff) is untouched by Team B (receiving team) and goes out of bounds there are four possibilities, however only two are really ever options.

1) decline the penalty, ball would be placed at the OOB spot, Team B 1/15
2) rekick, after a five yard penalty
3) assess the 5 yard penalty from the OOB spot, B 1/15
4) team B 1/15 from a spot 20 from team A restraining line (typically the 30, unless Team A restraining line had been relocated by a previous penalty)

So, option 1 is really never given, but it is an option.

Option 2 is always given.

Option 3 should only be given if the OOB spot is more advantageous than option 4. (Ex. if the ball goes OOB at a spot >= Team B's 26 yard line, since after penalty enforcement the ball would be beyond the Team B 30.

Option 4 should only be given if the ball goes OOB at a spot <= 25.

(Note, there is a distinction between option 3 & 4, you can't have both, ie ball placed at the 30 and then 5 yard penalty, unless the ball went OOB @ the team B 30)


I am more confused now. Let me see if I understand. The way you seem to explain it, the 5 yards tacked onto where the ball goes out of bounds, is really only a legitimate option if it goes out between the 25-30(on a typical kickoff). Why not simplify the rule then, and say either the 30 or where the ball goes out of bounds, whichever is best. So, if I understand it correctly, the 5 yards is only tacked on in that small window, is this correct?
 
No.

Think of it this way.

Why would you take an option that left you less than the 30?

so if it goes out at the 24, you would take it at the 30 instead of the 29.

If it went out at the 40, you would take the 5 yards and start on the Team A 35 rather than your 30.

So basically, if the ball goes out at the 25, it doesn't matter. Any where in advance of the 25, you want the 5 yards. Any where behind that and you will take it at the 30.

So the officials should know that and present the valid options.
 
Thank you very much. I was yelling at the ref to give us 5 yards but he would'nt. Twice he did not give us the 5 yards. I do not think he knows this rule.
 
No problem...

A little hint, yelling doesn't always get the desired results, I know that it is what comes naturally and it is what is shown on TV, yell and berate the officials, that is what they are there for. You will find that if you treat the officials with the same professional courtesy that they should be showing you, you might, get a better response.

I suggest this to all of my friends that are coaches. Depending on where you are in the state your area could be suffering a severe shortage of officials. The biggest issue is retention, we have folks come out for one year and they quit, some realize it isn't for them but the number one reason cited for not returning is the abuse that they take by coaches. This is typically at the subvarsity and jr high levels, but there are areas where 1st year officials are put on varsity fields just due to numbers to get the games played.

Realize that these first year officials aren't going to know all the rules verbatim or know exactly what to do all the time, and yes they do need to have thick skin but there is a line. They have to learn on the job, not unlike coaches.

Not saying the result would have been better, but instead of yelling, how about this...

Coach: Shouldn't that KOB come with a 5 yard penalty?
Official: No coach...
Coach: are you sure? I am pretty sure it does...
Official: no, I don't think so.
Coach: can you check with another official please? I just want to check.

Now the response may not change, but in theory it is more likely.. Also if you have these issues let the assigning secretary know so that they could hopefully could retrain the officials or let them know. Video is always good as well, not probably available for subvarsity usually though.

Good luck!!
 
I can tell you the calmer you are in your approach to talking with me, especially when you believe that my enforcement is wrong, the more likely I am to take what you have to say and consider it. I've been asked to confer with another official before and was able to put my pride aside to check with the other guy.
 
stripes if your pride is getting in your way of making a good football choice then get off the dang field.. i will give you this though at least you were honest you can be manipulated by how the cow spit is spread.
this is what every fan wonders if a ref can be manipulated and you wrote it right here in black and white. you should report your ownself to the UIL, no athlete should work that hard to have choices put in the hands of someone not making the right call due to any coach or fan saying anything to you
you disgust me where are your ethics
seems to me wire you flirt with this same issue too
 
hit dog barks?

I am pretty sure, and I can only speak for myself, that I don't let how a coach acts on the sideline have any influence at all on how I call the game between the lines, it does influence how I interact with the coach, especially assistant coaches. If he/they are acting irrational there is no reason to take it out on the kids playing on the field, now if their actions cross the line of acceptable behavior, then the coaches have caused any of the penalties they may incur to be assessed against their team for their behavior, not the official.

Personally, I have never flagged a coach, there were several times where perhaps I should have, but in an effort NOT to punish their players for their coaches actions, I went on about my business without it coming to that. So your insinuation that somehow my ethics are flawed because of advocating the idea that some coaches should try to speak to officials more like others in their work place rather than like a stray dog that stole the pie off the window sill is a little out of line... just a little bit...

What I did say, is that there are officials who might not know all of the rules, it is virtually impossible to know that rule book front to back and how to apply it in every situation, period (just as the vast majority of coaches that don't know all of the rules) and that yelling at them and berating them does more harm than good, particularly in the area of retention of officials. A coach yells and screams at a 1st year official and they don't come back, so all of the time that the offical and they chapter had spent getting them from point A to point B is gone... so next year, you get a brand new 1st year official and the process starts all over again. I am not advocating that they should be handled with kid gloves, but the numbers game in officiating is going to come to a head sooner rather than later, across the state, the supply of officials in many areas will not be able to keep up with the demand for them. It's a sad truth but as more an more experienced officials retire due to age/health/etc, you need younger people to fill in those voids, however, in many chapters there just aren't enough bodies to fill those holes, and that maybe yelling like a madman might not be the best way to keep folks around and learn.
 
kbjoe1":1qkix4nx said:
stripes if your pride is getting in your way of making a good football choice then get off the dang field.. i will give you this though at least you were honest you can be manipulated by how the cow spit is spread.
this is what every fan wonders if a ref can be manipulated and you wrote it right here in black and white. you should report your ownself to the UIL, no athlete should work that hard to have choices put in the hands of someone not making the right call due to any coach or fan saying anything to you
you disgust me where are your ethics
seems to me wire you flirt with this same issue too

Okay. Let's take a step back from this because I think there's a little too much emotion and not enough reason.

First of all, I don't let how any coach, player or fan speaks to me effect how I call the game. My officiating is based on my experience, study of the rules and mechanics, training, review of game film, and working with coaches and fellow officials to better understand the game and the interpretation of the rules.

That said, let me clarify what I meant as I feel I didn't do a good job of explaining what I meant. My "pride" comment wasn't to be taken as literally as it was and I apologize for that. I only say that as an illustration that there are many officials who tend to "bow up" when you accuse them of making a mistake rather than making sure that the call is right. I will never refused to talk to another official to "doublecheck" the rules or a specific call simply because of my individual pride. "Swallowing my pride' to defer to another or get some help is just an expression I use and I apologize if it communicated the wrong message. The Rules and the Integrity of the game (capitalized on purpose) are bigger than any official, coach, player or fan.

If a coach is just cussing and screaming about calls and obviously trying to job me a every turn, I'm less likely to take the words he's saying to me and process them as anything other than the same chaff that I'm getting from fans. If a coach is able to calmly express to me what he thinks is wrong, I'm more likely to realize that the information he is imparting to me is correct and that something is wrong and needs to be fixed.

It's as simple as this -- the more effective you as as a communicator, the more likely you are to get your point across. It doesn't change how I call the game, but it does process the information that I get from a coach. If I can understand what you are saying, I'm more likely to understand what you are trying to say.
 
I don't meant to continue to hijack the original thread, but figured I would provide some further insight on the assignment of young officials to games and just getting the games covered in general.

If you are not a coach or an official you may not know all the difficulties involved in getting officials. When it comes to shortages of officials it will most likely be the smaller classifications who suffer the most. We had a couple of weeks where would could not cover all of our games so I had to get other chapters to help out. We got help on both some sixman games as well as some 2A games that we just didn't have enough officials to cover. There were other nights where we helped other chapters work some sixman game they couldn't cover. There were many days where TASO was helping find crews for the schools and chapters. For the non-coaches and non-officials who just show up to watch a game and you see 4 officials out there, you may not realize the logistics involved in getting those 4 guys there or how far they may have traveled. Be thankful that you had a crew, because I had to turn down some schools that their home chapter couldn't cover. I felt bad that there may have been some games without officials but what do you do? If you don't officiate please grab a whistle and help plug these shortages. It's going to take fans to suit up and give back if we want to continue having high school football. I'm not going to name the schools but if I did and you contacted them and asked them how difficult it was for them in getting officials you'd have second thoughts about how you viewed the officials we currently have. I can assure you that those coaches are very thankful for the officials they got. Some were so new that just them being out there attemping to officiate was better than option B and that is cancelling the game.
 
to Fencewire - If you do not flag a coach that should be flaged you do it for a reason. First thought is "you don't want to make the coach mad because you might not get a playoff game."
You say you did not want to punish the players because of the coach. Why did you "PUNISH" the other team by NOT flagging the coach. You picked one team and rewarded them at the expense of the other. I always thought the officials were there to enforce the rules for both sides not just one.
think about that the next time a coach "should be flagged". Have the guts to make a call and be fair to both teams on the field. Flag on a coach or player is the same the coaches should be setting an example not be allowed to be above the rules.
 
OG, it is hard to impress coaches for playoffs when you are working subvarsity... but that is a good point to note, and something I should have included originally.

I think in my career, there are only two times that I probably should have flagged a coach, both jr high coaches. And much like when you are in a heated exchange with someone, not related to football or officiating, and you think of something you should have said about 10 minutes after you should have said it? In both cases that's what I felt about the coach flagging in those situations. At no time did they cross the you line, you know... you suck... or you *#($#(. It was more of an insinuation that we (i just happened to be on the sideline) were making calls simply to favor the other team, in one case.... In the other it was just a continual barrage to the point that he wasn't coaching the team any longer, but was more concerned with coaching me (this was very early in my career) made even worse that in this district for some odd reason they allowed the coaches to be on the field during subvarsity games like it was a scrimmage.

So in the first case, he was basically insinuating that we were cheating... which was funny because 2 of the 3 officials in the game actually lived in the school district that he "represented", this was probably my 3rd year calling and I let it go, should I have flagged him, probably, did I think about it right at the time, no... did I think about it after the fact, yes... Hindsight is always 20/20, but at the time, yeah, his chatter didn't impact the game it was just in my ear... so I ignored it when I probably shouldn't have...

In the second case, it was my first year and as noted, they had free roam of the field... so he was in my hip pocket the entire game, being very green didn't help matters, but at the time I really didn't know what to do, now I would handle that situation entirely differently, but again, it was him, his district basically said that they could go anywhere, carte blanche, but he very well could have been FOS as the other coaches stayed in their area the whole time, even though I was on the visiting sideline and he was there with me part of the time.

That is part of the seasoning of officials, to handle those situations correctly, especially when it comes to sideline control, both of those situations would be handled much differently at this stage of my career than when they happened but that is life, you learn from your mistakes and you try your darndest not to make the same mistakes again... Other than those two occurances, I can't think of any time where I didn't throw a flag on a coach when I look back and think that I should have, for the most part coaches are pretty good, they get heated from time to time and they would be quick to point out that this is their livelihood and is just our avocation, and I would imagine if my paycheck depended on how kids from 12-18 played athletics, I would probably be a little more on edge as well.

I heard on NCAA college supervisor put it in these terms for officials.... "Be the calm in a sea of chaos, maintain your poise, always"
 
In 12 years I have flagged only 1 coach and that was at a peewee game. He earned it and he had to be escorted off the field. As far has school level games. From Jr. High thru college I have never flagged a coach. Don't get me wrong there have been some that seem to have been begging for one. I'm not offended by any comments, personal or otherwise. When I have situations that come up I have 1 determining factor in deciding to flag or just let them vent. Will flagging the coach improve the game or will it make it worse? In all the times where I had situations I have judged that it would have made things worse. Good point already posted and that is to be the calming factor.
 
LOL

OG, if I've got a coach that's giving me an earful of grief, why in the world would I be concerned whether I worked a playoff game for him? That's ludicrous.

Most of the really "trouble" coaches are at the subvarsity level. The varsity troublemakers will see an ever-diminishing pool of officials willing to work their games. I know of several cases where a "sit down" between the coach, superintendent and chapter officials was required in order to finish out the season.
 
13 years I have never flagged a USC on a coach in any varsity contest. Sub varsity once. Pee wee more the once.

It is like this. NCAA is not like FED rules where specific actions are really laid out. So each individual official has to know that line. Most coaches I am sure know what that line is also. Granted some coaches know how to communicate professionally and others do not. Same goes for officials.
 
No flags on a varsity coach here, either, only a few in youth league.

Any time that I've had an assistant starting to get out of hand in a varsity game, I just calmly tell the head coach the following.

"Coach, your assistant is about to cost you fifteen if he keeps it up."

Speaking of young officials getting scared away from the game, that exact situation almost happened to me. My first ever contest other than a scrimmage was a junior varsity game for two of the larger schools in this area. There was a call in front of me that the coaches on my sideline wanted as a hold and, admittedly, I think I was just looking in the wrong place and didn't see what should have been a big and obvious penalty. They ripped me a new one until I finally threatened to flag them if they kept it up. It was one of those moments where I had to ask myself "why the heck would anyone want to do this and be treated this way." I'm glad that I didn't let a bad first experience scare me away from the game, but I've sadly seen it happen to a lot of young guys.
 
How can you educate a head official in this rule? We had the same official and he did the same thing as when I last posed this question. He would not award us the 5 yards. He placed the ball where it went out of bounds.
 
Folks (ie coaches) ... Remember the old adage, it's easier to attract flies with honey than with vinegar?

It might work here, too. Sure, the official is supposed to not take into account that you and your staff are acting like the southern end of a northbound donkey in making calls ... but why risk it?

There was a basketball coach I knew, not one of my better friends on this round ball known as the earth, but he did have a decent chance of getting calls. If he thought the refs were missing fouls against his kid, he wouldn't yell "Ref, they're holding in there" to get the calls.

But just as loudly, he'd yell at the kid ... so that the ref would hear ... "You can't let them hold you like that." And guess what? Relatively soon after, he'd get the calls he desired.

Try that approach and it might work ... just like some of the scenarios discussed above. Asking for an interpretation of the rule, or checking with another official might be the "honey" approach.

And if it doesn't work, well, chances are the sun will still rise the next morning.
 
Every now and then you find one that a flag is the only thing that gets his attention. You try to go along to a point and when it is time, you hit him with two. 30 yards will get his notice, just make sure he deserves every yard.
 
Back
Top