granting time-out as player goes oob

[Back In The Saddle]

Originally Posted by just another ref

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.