Quote:
Originally Posted by BillyMac
I wish that the NFHS was more definitive about what "participating" means ...
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This is about the third, or fourth, time, over decades, that I’ve done a deep dive into this situation.
Avoiding rule language that I find confusing, or ambiguous, here’s what I’ve pieced together.
1) The on-court officials must see the infraction occur, or have definite personal knowledge that it did occur, in order to penalize the infraction, not accepting the word of table personnel, coaches, etc.
2) The infraction is for more than five team members currently participating in the game. We all have enough common sense to know what participating means; we know it when we see it.
3) Such a infraction can occur, and/or be called, during a live ball, dead ball, clock running, or clock stopped situation, even if we have definite personal knowledge of an extra player walking off the court into a timeout, or walking off the court into an intermission.
4) Officials must do everything that they can possibly do to prevent situations like these from happening. We should count players after every substitution (same number out, same number in), timeout, and intermission, and if and when we find extras, we send them off with no penalty before starting play.
5) Once the ball is at the disposal of a player (throwin, or free throw) we could penalize the infraction. However, if we spot the extra player immediately after disposal (before the throwin pass is released, or before the free throw is released) we may be able to sound our whistle, take back the ball, and send off the extra player with no penalty.
Comments will be appreciated.