[GoodwillRef]

Originally Posted by jbduke

What's the spirit of the rule? To penalize/deter taunting/showboating. The Auburn player recovered the ball with the intent of scoring, but it's always a trick to pick it up on the run, not fully balanced. He also had no way of knowing if he had a Florida player ready to tackle him, so in order to insure that he got into the end zone, he dove. The flip was incidental to the dive. He wasn't showboating, and he certainly wasn't taunting Florida, he was just doing what he knew would absolutely insure that he got in, even in the event that he was grabbed from behind. Now, if he had picked it up at the 20 and been running at full-speed by the time he hit the 10 and dived/flipped from the 2, then it becomes a showboat move that would have justified the USC call.

You can come with the snark of "why waste money on training videos," etc., but you either didn't know or don't remember that the worst flag of the SEC season last year was a bad unsportsmanlike flag on Vanderbilt that cost them an opportunity to go for two and beat Florida in Gainesville. The SEC clearly wants it crews to make absolutely certain that USC fouls for celebration are warranted, which goes to Rut's point about conference philosophies. A flag on the play in the AU-UF game would not have helped the game one whit.

I don't know if we were watching the same game, I basically disagree with everything you wrote.