Blood and Timeout

[mbyron]

Originally Posted by Back In The Saddle

Interesting question indeed.

The blood rule is not a playing rule -- a violation or foul that should be called -- it's a safety rule. And if the unsafe situation ceases to exist before you can address it...why would you pursue it?

That was my thinking.

The blood rule requires us to stop play to address the situation. But here play is already stopped.

The time-out requirement is designed to speed up the game: in general since we have stopped play for safety reasons, we're either going to have the team use a time-out or resume play immediately. But here we didn't stop play for safety reasons, and play will resume no faster if we assess a time-out.

The time-out provision of the rule is not intended as a punishment, and it doesn't seem reasonable or fair to impose a punishment by assessing a time-out.