Help me understand. . . .

[ronny mulkey]

Agree with Blind Zebra for rules discussions boards. For teaching purposes, i agree with your buddy. If we can't expect clock operators to be "instantaneous" then I don't think we can expect our officials to react that quickly either. Bottom line - blow your wistle, look at the clock and if it continues to run, set it back to the time that you saw when you first glanced at it. Lag time is interpreted to be that period of time that it took for you to react and look at the clock....

I think that it takes a very good official to get to this point. The explanation to the coach becomes very important - "Coach, we are resetting the clock because we had definite knowledge of the time remaining at the time of the infraction". We have had guys that knew a timing error occurred and their explanations got all over the place.

Our State put together a training tape for this season of plays/mistakes and one of their emphatic statements was that if you have a foul at the end of a period followed by the horn then you should put time back on the clock. That statement is not allowing for lag time, glancing at the clock, definite knowledge of time remaining, determining clock operator error, etc. I guess they are expecting instantaneous reaction by the clock operator. Again, we have a very Women's College orientation down here.

Mulk