No, I'm not going to get on my soapbox at this time and lobby for eliminating the possession portion of the technical foul penalty. My feelings and reasons for this have been posted numerous times before.
However, what about taking a step toward equity and eliminating using the AP arrow after a double foul? Of course, I'm talking NF rules here.
No, I'm not claiming there is a crying need to stop teams from gaining an advantage by fouling in this case. That would assume teams would intentionally engage an opposing player in some kind of physical situation that would probably result in a double foul being called, just so they could get the ball on the AP arrow, if it was pointed their way. That's not my point at all.
My point is - since neither team gains an advantage or disadvantage by a double foul call, why should we have the possibility of a change of possession as part of the call? Wouldn't the equitable thing to do be to just give the ball back to the team in team control? It still wouldn't be difficult to determine who gets the ball if the foul occured when there was no team control. If the ball was live, but no control yet (like on an uncompleted inbound), give it to who you gave it to on the inbound.
I have heard the double foul theory argued that it is similar to a simultaneous double lane violation on a free throw. In that case, the offense gets "penalized", so it is fair to possibly "penalize" the offense in the case of a double foul (depending on the arrow direction). I don't think the two situations are the same so I don't buy that argument.
This year, the NF changed the rule about a defensive team violating or fouling on a throwin, saying that if the offense had the right to run the baseline on the throwin, they wouldn't lose that on a defensive violation or non-shooting foul.
Why shouldn't the same theory apply on the double foul? It seems quite capricious to penalize the offense sometimes and not penalize them sometimes depending on something that really has nothing to do with the foul (the AP arrow, of course).
What do you guys think?
BTW - "guys" is gender-neutral these days, Juulie
[Edited by Mark Padgett on Jun 15th, 2001 at 04:02 PM]