Questioning my T

[Adam]

Originally Posted by j51969

Refereeing advantage/dis-advantage sometimes allows players to play through some of this contact. If the NFHS book was used in its literal form without exception many games would turn into free-throw shooting contests. This is exception not the rule. Without knowing the level of skill of your team and the competition first hand I can't say for sure. But on a particular night its something to consider.

Forgive me, but I'm going to pick on your wording just a bit here. A literal use of the rule book requires us to determine if an advantage has been gained by the contact. Look at the definitions of "foul" and "incidental contact" in the rule book, and this becomes clear.

The dilemma is that different officials have different ways of determining an advantage. While the NFHS may want us to use a lower threshold for hand checks than for rebounds, there still needs to be some determined advantage (impeding, holding, pushing, etc.) in order for there to be a foul.

I picked on this wording because of the common phrase, "a foul is a foul." While it's a truism, it's a misleading one that assumes "contact" = "foul," and that officials have to figure out which fouls to call. That's not the case; we have to determine which contact is a foul, and call all the fouls.