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Well, who'd have a thunk we could have a 4 page discussion on coin toss options? I've been reading it and staying out of it so far, but now I'm going to offer you a little philosophy.
As background, I'm usually considered a "rules guy" by others in my area. And it's taken me a number of years to realize that there's more to the game than that. It might be considered sacrilegous by some to make this statement, but The Rulebook is Simply a Guideline for how the game should be played. Now, I'm not saying we can make up rules, nor can we ignore rules we don't personally like, because that's just chaos, not a game. But we need to temper the rules with common sense.
How many guys are going to flag every little mistake in a little kids game? According to the rule book you should. But we temper that with common sense and allow the kids to learn and have fun.
How many guys are going to flag contact on a receiver that would be DPI if the ball was thrown to him, but instead is in the air headed toward the other sideline? Remember, by FED rule, if the ball is in the air, this is DPI by the rulebook. Again, not too many are going to do this for very long. Again, common sense is tempering the rule book.
In a game where a team is getting blown out by 40, say you stop the clock for an injured player with 6 minutes left in the game and the clock operator doesn't get it stopped until 4 seconds after you signaled? Are you going to put the time back on? Again, by rule, you should, but are you going to?
We are out there to help the kids. We are out there to make them as safe as possible, give them a fair chance at winning the game, and give them a chance to have fun. If I can help prevent an obvious mistake by a 15-17 year old kid, then why wouldn't I? That kid has enough on his mind.
And remember, it's not just kids that make mistakes at coin tosses. At my very first college game as a white hat, I screwed up the signals on the toss. Stepped out, signaled the defer. Came back in, got the rest of the choices, then proceeded to signal that the team that had just defered was also going to receive. Naturally, that wasn't right. That gave the coach some pause until I trotted over and told him he was getting the ball, that I had just screwed up the signal. He just slapped me on the shoulder and said "Ok!"
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