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Originally Posted by zebraman
and life goes on.....  |
Aww, the fight's over already? I just got here...
I would be curious to find out what year this game occured, because bench decorum and the coach's box has been a POI in NCAA-W in the past couple of years. It went so far that I had one supervisor had us check the benches before the game to see if there was enough room for a coach to even stand OOB in the box. There were schools in the conference that were setting up their benches (folding chairs) close enough to the sideline that when the players sat, the only place for the coach to stand was inbounds. When we would ask the coach to get back in the box, they would point and say "There's no room", and figure that would give them a little more leeway. Finally, our supervisor told us to either have the coaches move the benches back so there is room to stand OOB, or have the coach sit the entire game. Period. And we had the backing of the conference as well. Pretty soon, benches started magically appearing farther back off the sideline.
Obviously coaches and schools will use any advantage they can get. Being out on the floor, even a little ways, is an advantage. Let me ask this: if you're at C, and the coach is standing right next to you trying to give their team instructions, do you ignore the coach? Is there an unfair advantage? What if you're opposite the table when this happens?
Well, now there's an advantage! So, when is the line crossed between ignoring the behavior and an unfair advantage? I guess the rule committees are saying the line is crossed when the line is crossed, so to speak.
As officials, that gives us more things to be aware of during a game. But since the bench is already under our jurisdiction, we now need to be more aware of it, even during a live ball. Perhaps it was a combination of officials saying things like, "If the coach isn't yelling at me, I'm not paying attention to them", and this video, that has prompted the rules committee to say it's time to start enforcing the rule as written, not enforcing it as we feel it should be enforced.
Of course, check with your supervisor for how they want it to be handled.