Quote:
Originally Posted by M&M Guy
This is the main part of my disagreement. So, what criteria do you use if this situation happens in the first 2 minutes of the game? You don't have any extra information to deal with, such as which player is a jerk, which one has 4 fouls, which team is way ahead, which fans would give you a hard time, etc., etc., etc. So, let's see...maybe you would use the criteria of "Which player fouled first"? Hmm...there's an idea. 
Now, what rule, case, interp, memo, etc. do you reference that says you can then change the way you make that call late in the game? So, instead of simply making the decision of "Which player fouled first?", you can now bring other factors into the decision-making process?
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I was working a game not too long ago where I had a game between two ranked teams and each had a player on the team is and was going D1 at some point. Well the Blue team had a senior on the team that was graduating and going to a Big Ten school the next year. The White team had a player that was an underclassman but will be going to a D1 school soon considering that he is ranked high in the country and heavily recruited.
Well in this hot match up I called a foul on the Blue player that was their star. He had scored like 30+ points at the time and I called his 4th foul that was obvious. Not two minutes later, I am the lead official and I call the 5th foul on this "star" and you could make a very small case that one of his teammates was around and fouled too. But it was clear to me that the "star" caused the foul first and created the most contact as well. I knew I just called this kid's 5th foul and reported it as such. But before I could get to the table, one of the Blue captains (who was in the same area) wanted me to call the foul on him. And even before I got to the table, the coach was complaining that his "star" was not the one that fouled, but the other kid fouled instead. Of course I never changed my mind and I was not taking back a foul for those reasons, but you would have thought this was a life or death issue for the Blue team. The captain followed me and was pleading with me to change the call. So much so that my partner (which I was not happy with at all and I have no idea why he just did not just put the ball in play considering I did not hold up play for a conversation) sends players to the bench. There was this like 3 way conversation going on with me in the middle about who this foul truly was on. If you would have seen this play on tape, there would have been no question who fouled and why a foul was called. I even had to talk to my partner later about stopping the game, because he just made the situation worse (IMO). This was not the first foul of the game or even the third foul of the game. This was the 5th foul and the Blue team knew they might lose in this very high scoring game with their best player that is going D1 the following year is out. The score ended up being like 97-92 and the Blue team won the game. BTW, the White team's star fouled out too in the game and I called that foul as well. I knew it, but this foul was not as "obvious" as the other one to everybody and I took heck for it on some level, but the team's coach knew me very well and how we were calling the game he did not give me crap, but the fans did.
Now both players fouled out clearly, but the focus was on those fouls no matter how I felt about them. My point in telling this story is to illustrate you can feel whatever you like about the 5th foul, if it is the right circumstance they are going to question that call openly. If I recall, that is why we have the non-calling official go and tell the coach their player fouled out right? So mechanically we do not treat that foul the same, so why do we want to act now like that call should not be there and not cause any controversy as much as we have control over this part of the game?
Peace