A First Time for Everything

[JRutledge]

Originally Posted by ozzy6900

Interesting, I must say. Many want to go by the letter of the law and eject people who are preventing the situation from boiling over. Think about what happens when benches clear.

Most of the players are simply holding their own players back or holding back the other team. A lot of pushing and holding but for the most part, only a few are actually fighting. Even these pugilists are being restrained by coaches and other players until cooler heads prevail. In the four bench clearing incidents that occurred when I was on the field, only the actual combatants were ejected. No one on any of the crews wanted to invoke the rule to the letter as it would not do anything but cause more problems. Most of these people just prevented further problems, and some of you want to eject them?

Remember, part of being an umpire is the ability to interpret the rules. Any idiot can enforce a rule but it takes an umpire to bring intelligence to a situation.

That sounds great and all that bravado is wonderful, but that is not the intent of the rules in this situation. This actually has little origins in umpiring, this has origins in an overall philosophy of the NF that creates the rules (and yes there is an overall philosophy on NF rules in many areas). And in every rules set in every sport I am aware of that the NF is responsible for, you leave the bench when a fight goes on you are ejected. No exceptions and no other interpretation needed. This is not the Majors or pro ball. And this mentality that we have to make decisions as umpires to decide is not what the rule intends at this level. I have never had a bench clearing brawl in baseball, but I have had one in football. Not fun and we did not give anyone a pass that we could identify came off the bench. And almost every pro sport has a similar position as the NF does on these matters and funny no one fights coming off the bench other than baseball. Yes there are players that can come off the bench and realistically help stop the fight, but the more people involved the more likely something will escalate. Just ask Kermit Washington about this what good it does to have people flying at you in a brawl.

Peace