I've never seen an official be able to grant the TO before the player landed.

Grant the TO if it's legally made while the ball is still live.

If he lands before he makes the request, whistle the violation and then ask if he still wants the TO.

Errr...so, what rule says you are not allowed to grant the time out? Even though the player is still legally entitled to his time out?

So we have the flexibility to grant a time-out either instantly, (even if the whistle is later) or not at all, depending on the circumstances, even though the requests that were made were identical on two plays. Is there another play where an official must use judgment to decide what a team might want?

Another angle: You hear team A's coach say "I want a time-out after this free throw." But A1 stops listening after "I want a time-out......" and asks for the time-out NOW. You have to call one there, don't you?

What does your question have to do with granting a player a time-out when he/she is falling OOB or is airborne?

Earlier we agreed that the coach asking for a time-out who was too late to avoid a violation should be asked if he still wanted it. In this case we know that the coach doesn't want it, but a player made the request. I wanted to know if this knowledge kept anyone from granting the time-out here.

In <b>both</b> situations you have legally made TO requests. In <b>both</b> situations, there's <b>no</b> reason by rule for you <b>not</b> to grant those TO requests.

These are the words I was waiting for someone to use. By rule, you must grant a time-out request which is properly made. When a player lands out of bounds before the time-out is granted, by rule it is a violation, because his request did not cause the ball to become dead. The bottom line is, I don't see how you can have it both ways.

By rule it's a timeout. Just cause I have a delayed whistle on a foul doesn't mean that the foul doesn't happen before the whistle blows.

You can't officiate the game inside a little book.

You are the only person basically making this argument. I have never heard anyone else ever have an issue with the way the rule was written or the application of the rules. So it is not about anyone having it both ways, it is about the fact you do not want to accept the correct application and want to tell people that not only have been officiating longer than you or I, but I have some insight on the game you likely do not possess at this time. People have been telling you what you should do and you keep telling everyone what is right or wrong. It is one thing to disagree that the wording is not the best, it is quite another to tell everyone how the rule should be applied because you read something that no one else sees. If I brought this conversation up with people that I actually officiate with, I would be laughed out of the locker room.

Peace

Your granting of of the TO caused the ball to become dead. You granted the TO <b>before</b> the player landed OOB. Granting the TO and sounding your whistle to acknowledge that you did grant the TO are two completely different matters. The time between granting the TO and your actual whistle is regarded as lag time, JAR. It's nothing different than being a split-second late in whistling a foul that you've just recognized. It's impossible to blow your whistle simultaneously with the act that you want to call. None of our reflexs are that good.

You're reading something into the rules that isn't there. It's nothing but a standard, every day call.

Similar sitch
 

OK, last week the coach stood and yelled "time out" just a split second before his guard traveled. I didn't have a chance to blow the whistle to stop play before the violation, however my common sense tells me to take the event that occurred first, the time out. Even one of the kids on the team asked me, "Did he get the time-out before the travel?" No travel had been blown or signaled because the time out was CALLED (not GRANTED) first.

Okay, this one made my light bulb come on. (about time) This one is easier to define in my mind because my thought process would have already started as far as granting the time out before the travel. The travel was not anticipated, the airborne player landing out of bounds obviously was, but the concept is the same.

Having said all this, I would still like the addition to 6-7: Ball becomes dead when a player/coach properly requests a time-out.

On its surface this sounds like a good change. However, when you factor in the reality that sometimes we simply don't see/hear the request, then you've got a bigger problem than simply failing to hear a request; you've missed a dead ball. I also think that coaches would develop (more of) an attitude that they have the power to stop the game any time they please. Then there are the potentially prickly clock management issues. A HC requests a time out, the official has to verify that it was actually the HC and that the team is in player control of the ball. That takes time. Do we put that time back on the clock since the ball became dead upon his/her request? How do we know how much time? Technically it's a moot point because we only put time back on the clock if it fails to stop on the whistle. But every HC in America will want to argue that the ball was dead the moment he made that funny T sign and that wants every last tenth of a second that ran off the clock while you verified the situation, blew the whistle, and the clock operator stopped the clock.

No, the better solution would be for them to make a little more explicit what they mean by grant. The rule is just fine the way it is; you simply insist on reading your own meaning of "grant" into it.

Disagree. The better solution would be just to revert to the old rule and forget about letting the head coach call a TO. Hell, even the FED is finally starting to admit that they screwed up when they changed this rule, as per the POE in this year's rule book.

<b><u>GRANTING TIME_OUTS.</u></b> <i>"Coaches attempting to call a time-out during playing action are a continuing problem. When player control is lost, officials must concentrate on playing action while attempting to determine if a time-out should be granted. Coaches should recognize that a request for a time-out does not guarantee that a time-out will be granted until player control is clearly established. Officials should not grant a time-out until player control is clearly established."</i>

Add that on to the fact that you also have to verify that it is indeed the head coach who is requesting the TO, and not an assistant coach, sub, trainer or some doofus fan sitting in the second row behind the bench. It all adds up to a really stoopid rule imo. And a stoopid rule that is also a pain-in-the-butt to administer.

I would agree that it's a bad rule. When I suggested the need to better define "grant" I was thinking mostly about the OP and the falling OOB scenario. But I admit to liberally mixing several scenarios in my analysis of JAR's proposed rule change.

If I had to prioritize my wishes, getting rid of the HC timeout request would rank waaaaay above better defining "grant." I think it's well enough understood by most people as it is.