Quote:
Originally Posted by daggo66
ajmc,
I understand your point regarding "spirit and intent," however you are arguing for argument sake. You know darn well what the spirit of the numbering exception rule is. I think you just like to pick things apart. Officiating is not mathmatics. We don't need an equation to prove every point. I could say the spirit and intent of the roughing the passer rule is to prevent injuries to passers. Pretty hard to argue that point, but if you really wanted to, you could. Now you are arguing about the Bush doctrine which was mentioned as an analogy. You are starting to remind me of my ex-wife. She would argue and before long the argument became about the argument itself instead of the original topic. Playing devil's advocate when discussing rules is great and I think extremely beneficial, however picking nits is not.
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This reminds me of an old saying about the baseball rules -- the rules are written by gentlemen for gentlemen. A finite set of rules for an infinite set of situations and it's up to the participants to play within the spirit and intent of the rules.
I do see this as an ethical problem, personally. Exploiting a loophole that's called a "scrimmage kick exception" when there's never any intent to use this exception for a scrimmage kick situation is ethically shaky, IMO. Especially considering the history of the exception and why it was put in place in the first place.
I had a coach who once, on third down, lined the quarterback up just a bit deeper in the shotgun formation and then screamed like a banshee at us when we didn't flag the defense for roughing the snapper. Same thing. The rule is there so centers don't get hurt, not to pick up 15 cheap yards and a first down.