No where in the original post does it indicate that there was a foot in the shoe. Assume for a minute that there was an EMPTY fan's shoe on the court. Now what do you have?

Got a court with some bizarre unexplained bump in it and no call.

A1, in the backcourt, passes the ball to A2, who leaps from the frontcourt to catch the ball. In midair, A2's shoe comes off and lands in the backcourt near the divisional line. The ball hits the shoe and bounces to A3 who fouled in the act of shooting a successful 3-point shot.

Let's see how a strict constructionist might adjudicate these circumstances. The shoe, being a non-viable subset of a player, is not where it is, in the backcourt but rather still in the front court, as A1 has not landed at the time the ball strikes the shoe.

The seat-of-the-pants approach is to pretend the shoe NEVER EXISTED for game purposes, toss it to the kid, and mutter, "put this effing thing on and learn to tie it!"

I am just flabbergasted that how this play can be nothing more or less than an out-of-bounds violation by the player who lasted touched the ball before the ball hit a spectator who is sitting in the first row. Let restate my post of Jan. 23, 2004, 09:17pm:

If all the fan was doing was just sitting in the first row of a gym with little or no room on the sidelines and the fan made no effort to intentionally touch the ball with the foot, you do NOT have fan interference (do not go looking for weird things), you have an out-of-bounds play. The team that last touched the ball before the ball touched the fan caused the ball to go out-of-bounds. This is not a play on situation. A out-of-bounds violation has occured.


Do not try to make something out of nothing.

Mark, we all use a browser to surf this site.

We saw what you wrote on Friday.

There's absolutely no need to re-state it.

If people didn't believe you the first time, they aren't going to change their mind just because you know how to copy and paste.

[Edited by BktBallRef on Jan 25th, 2004 at 06:20 PM]

OOB is appropriate here. You're lucky the ball took a normal hop, otherwise you'd have to explain the ball going crazy 'in-bounds'.

I have done games where the bleachers were right up to the sideline and in other cases that all they had for seating for the parents were folding chairs right up to the line.

Who Throws a shoe? Honestly!

If I remember right, there is a play pic about a photographer being on the court and interfering. The ruling was OOB and taking his press credentials! I believe that this is a very similar situation.