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Old Thu Dec 16, 2004, 09:51am
mcrowder mcrowder is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: Little Elm, TX (NW Dallas)
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No, I wouldn't. To take the point to the extreme...

It's legal for them to attempt a forward pass on a play. We should assume that they know that their options on a play that follows a penalty are the same. You would not remind them after a penalty that they have all the same options that they had before the penalty ... so why the exception here. Just because it doesn't come up often?

I think that any time you step outside your bounds to "help" a coach, you run a risk of unfairness. What happens when the OTHER coach finds out you've in essence suggested something to the first coach that helps the first coach score? Even worse, what happens if exactly this scenario happened to his team in previous weeks, but that official didn't remind them of an obscure rule?

It's not our job to help out a coach or a team (I'll admit an exception to this at lower levels, of course) - and once we do so, we begin directly affecting the game instead of officiating it --- a line we should not cross.

To me, reminding a coach in this sitch that he can FK is as bad as saying, as the clock winds down, "Coach, you have 1 timeout left", before he asks.
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