In my experience, the most abominable behavior gets "justified" in terms of being "for the kids." That doesn't wash.

I have no problem with sending a message to the coach. During a dead ball: "Coach, do you really have to keep pressing? C'mon." That's a message.

What you're doing is making up rules, and it is not legitimate. If you really want to effect legitimate change, talk to the league about changing the rule so that the press must be taken off after a X point lead (for some X). Then enforce your new rule.

Of course I wouldn't cheat, but I didn't state my point well enough. I talked to my buddy who is a college official and he kind of gave me some ideas.

He said that you are "within the context of the rule book" to call a foul on any contact that disrupts the rhythm or balance of a player.

Team A is completely dominant. They are able to play through minimal contact with no problem.

Team B simply cannot play. Any contact disrupts their rhythm or balance.

Therefore, unless Team A can play defense and steal the ball every single time with zero contact, then I am within the context of the rules to call a foul on any contact since Team B is unable to play through any minimal contact. All contact puts them at a severe disadvantage. So, a hand of the back, body contact on a steal, however minimal is a Foul.

Team A is able to play through minimal contact without it disrupting their rhythm or balance. In other words, they still are able to do what they want to do and go where they want to go.



Are you guys telling me that you would call the exact same foul against Team B as you would Team A when A is not affected by minimal contact and B is just completely knocked off balance? You would really have Team A shooting double bonus leading 84-0? Team B should get the benefit of calls because any contact at all disrupts anything they are trying to do.

It's called game management and "looking at the big picture". One team is not competitive and staying within the context of the rules, you are still able to call enough fouls to hopefully get the winning coach to back off a little.


Here is another example: If Team B is down 95-0 with a minute or so to play, and they throw the ball in bounds and the dribbler takes a couple of baby steps before dribbling.....and travels slightly.....would you really call travelling in that situation? Or , would you let it go?

The rulebook says.....call the travel.....common sense says to ignore it.

If I have to do that for a team that is down by 84 points and they have 0, then there is a big problem. And for all you know, there might not have been any fouls to call. If you cannot score at least on field goal, I doubt free throws are going to help.

Peace

dave30, I just want to remind you what you wrote. You said that you'd call fouls on steal attempts, suggesting that you'd call a foul even where none occurred. You said that you'd make up traveling calls. You said that you would "bend the rules," meaning fake calls, to send a message.

We said that this is unethical, inappropriate, and tantamount to cheating.

Your latest post concerns an entirely different issue, namely how to call fouls in a blowout. You allude to the standard advantage/disadvantage principle for calling fouls. These points are legitimate, but they do not concern the unethical suggestions you made in your first post in this thread.

In my opinion it would be a grave mistake and reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of officiating to conclude that the fairness of calling fouls differently based on advantage/disadvantage could possibly legitimize the approach outlined in your earlier post.

My first post came out wrong. I just wanted to point out that when a team is severely disadvantaged by any contact that I would give them the benefit of doubt as to whether the contact disrupted their play. And down by 59-0 at the half, I think any contact would be called a foul and at that level, I doubt that the defense is so good that they can steal the ball every time with no contact.

I think what dave30 meant to say, but didn't come close, was that the laws of advantage/disadvantage would be skewed somewhat due to the fact that one team sucked.

Getting rolled, score wise, doesn't mean they are any more disadvantaged by contact than a team that is competitive.

Look, I think we all understand that certain situations call for differing standards of how we call things. These changes are for neutral reasons -- keeping control of the game, getting the game over with, etc.. Dave, your tone, however, is one of "I don't like what this team is doing so I am go to change the way I call to punish them." As an official, that's unacceptable. That isn't our job.

While I think this has been overblown tremendously, I do hope the publicity from this event will lead the Fed into a mercy rule of some sort. With all the blowouts I've had in the last few years, we need this desperately.

Actually, you're close to the confusion here. When one team sucks, then it can certainly look as if you're calling fouls in their favor.

The mistake is to actually do that, rather than calling based on advantage/disadvantage.

however advantage/disadvantage is not a based on a finite set of rules -- what could be judged disadvantage to one person due to their ability could be judged advantage due to lack of said ability. Pretty much the concept tyies to weave in players ability and the guidelines of our rules to allow for a smooth and fluid game.

Judging ALL contact as equal based on advantage/disadvantage is a misapplication of the concept. As players ability are taken into consideration.

Yeah! Why couldn't I put it that way? !!

Dave, I humbly submit that if calling such a game we might all be tempted to slant the calling in favor of the poor have-nots. To what degree one would actually do this, if at all, would have to be an individual decision at the time. The one thing I think one absolutely should not do, is brag about such adjustments on the calls, whether it be before or after the fact, or hypothetically, as you have done.

"A large part of being presumed or found guilty, is the failure to keep one's mouth shut."


anonymous

Update!
 

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcont...u.2781526.html

Also: http://www.flightbasketball.com/100-...rom-Coach.html

Wow, unusual. Good for them!

At least the coach has his "integrity!" :rolleyes:

There's a story on ESPN about it now.

http://sports.espn.go.com/highschool...=ESPNHeadlines

Seems that the players on the winning team are now saying that scoring 100 points was one of the fired coach's pre-game "goals" that he wrote on the board in the locker room. The guy is a moron and has no business coaching at any level.