[Reffing Rev.]

Week 6, last Friday night.

I was working R last week for the usual crew, which btw is improving by landslides week in and week out for those who remember my earlier posts. On the way to the game our BJ tells me he got called into our hometown coaches office this week. The coach showed him some video of their game last week to see if a play was legal or not. The play happened to be the way the visiting team in our game that night got an "automatic" first down on every 4th and less than 5.

Here is the play. Any punting situation they would line up unbalanced to wide side of the field, everyone come set hands on knees. On "set" they would all abruptly stand and shift over to a balanced formation. The defense would invariably encroach. Our BJ called it a legal shift, I told him that was not so.

I read for him rule 7.1.7b (reference I think) you know that any act which is clearly intended to cause B to encroach is a false start. I saw no other purpose for this play.

Here we go - pre-game. "Coach, any unusual plays or formations you'd like to let us know about?" He then went on to describe pretty much is entire playbook to us and then said at the end, oh yeah, we run this shift on our punt thing, and he described the play." I had the opportunity then to tell him this was a false start and why.

He smiled and said, "I thought it would be, but we've done it all year without it being called."

It being week 6, I was again disgusted. He's probably had 5 previous crews let this one go.

Do we all agree this is a false start?