National Anthem Standoff

[jicecone]

Originally Posted by johnnyg08

In my email this morning:

National Anthem Standoff:

Any umpire shall eject any player, coach, manager or trainer for violations of the Coaches & Players Code of Ethics, p. 10. Conferences may choose to implement additional penalties (see Appendix D) The UIC is to warn the head coach of the offending team that should any player not return to his dugout area immediately after the playing of the National Anthem, the head coach and player(s) will be ejected immediately.

You know dam well that had the officials "strictly enforce this rule" for this game, their assignor would be pulling their schedule and the NCAA would be double talking about how we expect the officials to use common sense.

Just another we want our umpires to officiate by the "letter of the law" rule, but if you become to OOO then we are going to nail your arse and not support you officially. And it is really is not worth our time to better define criteria for making your decision but, you better make the right one.

[Matt]

Originally Posted by jicecone

You know dam well that had the officials "strictly enforce this rule" for this game, their assignor would be pulling their schedule and the NCAA would be double talking about how we expect the officials to use common sense.

Just another we want our umpires to officiate by the "letter of the law" rule, but if you become to OOO then we are going to nail your arse and not support you officially. And it is really is not worth our time to better define criteria for making your decision but, you better make the right one.

I'm going to disagree on this one--while there can be a sense of hypocrisy and capriciousness when it comes to the NCAA supporting its officials, I haven't seen it in baseball too much. I know my only (to this point) collegiate EJ was ticky-tack, but I got no push back on using the letter of the law to do it.*

I think that the attitude you have, while understandable, may cause your fears to become self-fulfilling.

*I used 5-16 to eject a player. It was minimal, but it was necessary per monkey theory--there had been numerous close calls I had that had all gone against the same team, and I knew that this particular incident had to result in an example being set. So, I used black-and-white to support gray game management.

[jicecone]

Matt, I was particuarly talking about this situation. According to the "letter of the law", two teams could have been ejected. Maybe I generalized a bit however, you stated yourself;

"The manner of enforcement needed to be clarified. This is a situation in which there are options all the way from doing nothing to ejecting every swinging Richard.

[Rich Ives]

I'm thinking this probably started when someone at some game chastised the players for "breaking the huddle" before the anthem was over and this started a "can we go now" reaction.

[JJ]

I've decided they should play the anthem after the game - then the players can stand out there all night.


JJ