Quote:
Originally Posted by rulesmaven
This.
Plus, I'd add that rules and their enforcement need to give players reasonable notice of what they can and can't do. Players watch sportscenter. They see what their opponent does. How can you have a situation where nobody knows what is legal and what is not?
The answer that one can just hand the ball to an official and run to the sideline and have nothing to worry about is not satisfying to me. If you want that to be the rule, fine. Make it the rule. It sure would help officials. But that's not the rule. So long as the rules allow for some spontaneous celebration, it's very hard to see how one can justify last night's call. If a rule is so ambiguous that even the same crew doesn't call it the same way every time, then you simply have to err on the side of not calling it unless it's something you feel confident most objective people would say, "ah, yes, that's what we want to stop."
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If you were a player and you've seen all the inconsistencies on all the sports replays and you weren't sure if you'd get flagged or not, why would you risk doing something that may or may not be flagged. When playing with fire, sometimes you get burned and sometimes you don't. My advice is to NEVER play with fire because you never know when it's your turn to get burned. Two officials judged the action to be a foul. Other officials may not agree it was a foul. 50/50 is just not an area, if I were a player, that I'd risk doing something to draw a flag. They can never give enough rule changes that could say that this act will be a foul 100% of the time and this act will never be a foul. It just don't work that way. It just another judgement call. Don't do something to force that official to use judgement. That should be enough of a deterant that all players will not risk doing anything. There is a very good chance we don't see any type of action following a score the rest of this year. If that turns out to be true, then mission accomplished with removing celebrations from the game, which is the mission of the rules committee.