[MD Longhorn]

Originally Posted by ajmc

Forgive me Mike, I presume not everyone is as anal as you seem to insist on being, nor limits any explanation to specific wording.

How is it "anal" to actually call based on the rules, without making crap up?

Not sure of your experience, so this might come as somewhat of a shock to you, but there are players and/or teams that actually work very hard at deliberately trying to mask "simulating action at the snap" so as to draw their opponent into a foul situation. You may even eventually discover that deliberate attempts to draw an opponent into a foul, thereby creating an unearned and undeserved advantage is not as rare as we'd all hope it would be.

You're kind of making my point here, I agree. Your suggestion to call the foul only if they draw the defense is contrary to what you say. If a team deliberately attempts to draw an opponent into a foul, but does it legally - then the other team has fouled. (An example may be a QB varying his cadence, or even something as simply as snapping on 2 for the first time in a game). If they do it ILLEGALLY, it's a foul, regardless of whether the defense falls for it or not. If the center wiggles the ball, but the defense doesn't jump, it's still a foul. If the QB bobs his head and doesn't draw the defense, it's still a foul. Ditto the RB. Either it's a foul, or it's not. Waiting for the defense to react is not only unnecessary, it's improper.

When you've done this for a little bit,

Stop with this. You're right - you don't know me.

you may even learn that proactive intervention is sometimes necessary to prevent endless repetition of negative behaviors, and not everything we're expected to do is spelled out, explicitly by rule.

Care to give an example other than the one here? There are some VERY SMALL holes in the book, but for the most part, the rule book and/or the case book do give us a very good idea of what is expected of us. I don't think they want us doing something contrary to rule simply to proactively prevent endless repetition of negative behaviors.

As for two identical instances producing different results, the part you seem to be missing is, if you handle the first instance properly, you may avoid having to deal with a second instance.

I agree. If it was illegal when he did it the first time, even if the defense didn't jump, hopefully the offense won't continue to try it. Kind of wondering what your point was here, as it contradicts what you've said earlier. You said you would NOT flag this if the defense reacts ... which will lead to the offense trying it a 2nd (or more) time to try to illegally draw off the defense. And if you didn't flag it when you should have the first time, and they do it again, the coach is going to have every right to be upset that you didn't call it earlier, but you did now.