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Originally Posted by rockyroad
First off, let me say that in principle I agree with the gist of your post...my one disagreement however is that the fouls off-ball must be "obvious" in order to call them. Obvious to whom? There are any number of things which will not be seen by the coach/fans, but absolutely have to be called in order to protect the game and the players and to keep things from getting out of hand. Example - HS summer league Varsity Boys last Saturday - forward for white team being blocked out quite nicely by forward from red team decides to pinch red forward in the side of the stomache...I can pretty much guarantee you that I was the only one who saw it, called it, and when the coach does the "What did he do?" routine, told him exactly what happened and he sat the kid down. That was not "obvious" but it definitely had to be called...so I think we need to be careful about the phrase "call the obvious fouls" to the exclusion of all other fouls...
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You make some very good points here. When I say obvious, I mean obvious to the tape. In other words, when they show the replay, that foul better be there, or it had better have had an influence on the play, or when the coach reviews the tape the next day, he should not have to rewind 5 times to find the foul. In the case of the pinching incident, that's a must get too in my opinion because it's non basketball and it's very easy to explain to the coach. Of course if you've stopped the game numerous times with calls that aren't obvious and don't make sense, it might cause you to lose your credibility with the coach and have him roll his eyes when you explain what happened.
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Originally Posted by Jurassic Referee
Maybe traveling, carrying and off ball fouls get called because they're rules. Maybe they also get called because all three have been and still are concerns of both the NFHS and the NCAA; all have been repeated POE's in the last few years.
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Sure traveling and carrying are rules and you say advantage/disadvantage doesn't apply to violations, but how many of us actually apply the letter of the rule everytime when it comes to violations, and what do we think of officials who do? Who's gonna call 3 seconds everytime when a player is not involved in the play. Perfect example is during an interrupted dribble the count remains in effect, so what about the guy who makes the 3 seconds call when the ball is loose near the division line? Another example is NFHS rule 9.3.2 or "leaving the court for unauthorized reasons." Correct me if I'm wrong but this was a POE a year or two ago and they wanted Ts. I once saw someone call that one 4 times in a game, and all four times the player did leave the court and technically the official was right, but the coaches had this guy's backside and nobody knew what in the hell he was calling. Is that a guy who has the balls to make the right call, or a guy with bad judgement? Traveling and carrying, in my opinion should be officiated in the same way, the calls should be the obvious ones and the ones that create an advantage and we should err on the side of calling fewer travels and definitely shouldn't be out looking to call travels and carries and getting the ones that you have to look at 10 times on the replay to determine if it's the right call.
As for the off ball fouls NFHS rule 4.27 indicates that there can be incidental contact and 4.27.3 specifies that contact that does not hinder an opponent from participating in normal maneuvers is incidental. In other words if it doesn't affect the play, isn't non basketball and isn't obviously rough, it shouldn't be called.
Calling things that aren't obvious or aren't there really hurts your credibility in my opinion. You are needlessly stopping the game, interrupting the flow and being an irritant to the players and coaches. Just my opinion though.