Flagrant for an Elbow?
 

What are you looking for when determining if player has committed a flagrant foul when swinging his elbow? I've never seen a game where it was called.

Intent to injure.

Not necessarily. A flagrant foul can be committed by accident.

Don't write me letters. No, I've never seen it happen.

technically speaking, you're correct, I suppose; but I'm not going flagrant without intent unless there are broken bones involved.

So what would it take for you to call a flagrant without the intent to injure?

A1 gets a rebound. He spreads his elbows wide and makes a big roundhouse swing, catching B1, who is standing close behind, flush on the jaw and knocking him goofy. A1 apologizes profusely, helps B1 to his feet, and heads to the bench.

Generally go with arm/elbow swinging faster than the torso w/ contact. General principle - not always applicable, but sometimes helps in determining excessive contact. Intent to injure is of course an easy one if you can determine it.

It's a personal judgment by the calling official, same as with the intent to injure...and all flagrant fouls aamof.

You can't fit intentional or flagrant fouls into nice, neat compartmentalized brackets. Every play is unique and has to be called as such. And every play requires some degree of judgment before you make the final decision as to whether a foul actually occurred and then what kind of foul it was. Contact with a swinging elbow by a player with the ball is no different. Your options during a live ball are incidental contact, player control foul, intentional personal foul or flagrant personal foul. And you get to pick which option is appropriate for that particular play; no one can do it for you.

I agree that reckless disregard for the safety of other players can also lead to a flagrant foul.

But that wasn't the question. The question was: "What do you look for..."

And I look for intent to injure, just as I said. So stop correcting me. :p

Oh, and what JR said, too.

this is definitely a "had to be there" call...but I will ask you this: "how many times have you seen a player get hit in the face with an elbow?"...doesn't happen often does it?...do you know why?...because players are able to control their elbows so that they don't hit other players.....SO, when it happens, it is an unusual event and can be a relatively easy call to assess a flagrant foul and eject him.

my rules of thumb:
swinging of the elbows and NO contact = violation
swinging of the elbows & contact to the torso = personal foul (probable intentional)
swinging of the elbows & contract to the head/neck area = flagrant foul

I have; actually I was officiating it. A big man caught a rebound, brought the ball at face height, took a brief look behind him and swung his elbow hitting an opponent right in his face. The opponent did just like Sylvester the cat when hit by a club and the big man walked away even before seeing me signalling the ejection.

Probably there had been some previous, unnoticed, roughness between the two. :( That player used to play physically, perhaps hard, at times, but I'd never seen anything like that from him.

Ciao