Quote:
Originally Posted by maven
USC can be either live-ball or dead-ball, and what the "violator thinks" about the status of the ball is irrelevant.
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Is it
always irrelevant? If the player with the ball thinks it's alive but the opponents he's nyah-nyahing to know it's dead, that doesn't seem like much of a taunt. Of course USC can occur regardless of whether the ball is alive, but couldn't the status of the ball affect your judgment as to whether an act was unsportsmanlike?
In this case ISTR having read of either a rule or a ruling in either Fed or NCAA that identified certain tactically useless and demonstrative acts while carrying the ball over the goal line -- backing up or diving while out in the open -- as specific cases of USC. So my question is whether those are limited to live ball situations.
My own assessment is that the essence of unsportsmanlike conduct lies in the intentions of the person doing it, so that it shouldn't matter whether the ball is alive or not, but I wanted to know whether the rules comport with that concept.