Shot goes in, then push foul. How often?

[RandyBrown]

>>Your vast experience needs some tweeking here. Most times, on a rebounding push, we ignore it if the shot goes in. There's no real advantage as there's no rebound to be "stolen." Now, if displacement is significant (measurable in yards rather than inches or even feet), we sometimes go get it anyway.

“Most times”?! “Yards rather than inches or even feet”?! And you mock me?! No one can make you appreciate Points of Emphasis #1. The Committee can repeat it every year, forever. As long as assignors and local boards don’t enforce it, it isn’t ever going to make a difference with some. They just don’t get it. I appreciate what you’re saying, believe me--I get “patient whistle”, but that doesn’t mean I accept it as a philosophy. It has proven itself to be a slippery slope, you must agree. NFHS is not imagining the negative impact from our deviation--they experience it. Committee members are from all over the country. I’m sure they are constantly talking to coaches and ADs. If we don’t use the rules-as-written as the line in the sand, then there is no common line—it varies with every official as we slide down the slope. Coaches and ADs and parents, through NFHS, get to make the rules, not us. You clearly do not appreciate The Intent and Purpose of the Rules, (p.7), which is why the Committee felt the need to write POE #1. Your comment in opposition to “a foul is a foul” is true in my neck of the woods, too, but your acceptance of it makes you a member of their target audience. I’m not comfortable there, and never intend to be.

[tref]

Well I think... wait a minute, my name is not Snaqs or Rich.

[Adam]

Originally Posted by RandyBrown

>>Your vast experience needs some tweeking here. Most times, on a rebounding push, we ignore it if the shot goes in. There's no real advantage as there's no rebound to be "stolen." Now, if displacement is significant (measurable in yards rather than inches or even feet), we sometimes go get it anyway.

“Most times”?! “Yards rather than inches or even feet”?! And you mock me?! No one can make you appreciate Points of Emphasis #1. The Committee can repeat it every year, forever. As long as assignors and local boards don’t enforce it, it isn’t ever going to make a difference with some. They just don’t get it. I appreciate what you’re saying, believe me--I get “patient whistle”, but that doesn’t mean I accept it as a philosophy. It has proven itself to be a slippery slope, you must agree. NFHS is not imagining the negative impact from our deviation--they experience it. Committee members are from all over the country. I’m sure they are constantly talking to coaches and ADs. If we don’t use the rules-as-written as the line in the sand, then there is no common line—it varies with every official as we slide down the slope. Coaches and ADs and parents, through NFHS, get to make the rules, not us. You clearly do not appreciate The Intent and Purpose of the Rules, (p.7), which is why the Committee felt the need to write POI #1. Your comment in opposition to “a foul is a foul” is true in my neck of the woods, too, but your acceptance of it makes you a member of their target audience. I’m not comfortable there, and never intend to be.

I've got to tell you I have no intention of reading your entire response. The crux of your position seems to asking us to just quote the rules. Why? You can read them, right? The fact is, "incidental" is no where stated in the dead ball contact rule. Stick to the right words, correct?

As for this post, it's not me who is displaying an inability to understand the purpose and intent of the rules.

Here's what it boils down to with contact (completely off topic from the OP, but hey, we do that all the time). There's too much contact on the court to call it all a foul, so we have to have a way of deciding which contact to call and which to ignore. How? The incidental contact rule, and even the very definition of "foul." To paraphrase, "contact which does not prevent the opponent from performing normal defensive or offensive movements should be ruled incidental."

How this is interpreted probably varies widely by region, but from your comments above, your area isn't appreciably different than mine in this regard.

If you have a dribbler driving past a defender, and the defender slaps the arm of the dribbler while getting beat, are you going to call the foul?

You have two rebounders, one behind the other facing the basket. The one behind pushes the one in front so that it moves him a couple of inches; yet the one in front gets the rebound. Are you going to call that foul based on your "a foul is a foul" theory?

"A foul is a foul" is, quite simply, the ultimate truism; and just as meaningless. Most officials realize that not all contact is a foul.

Now, I realize I've been a bit snarky lately, and for that I apologize. Chalk it up to sleep apnea or something.

[Adam]

And as for "intentional," I took it to mean the rule definition of intentional foul, rather than the dictionary definition of intentional. The way this rule is typically interpreted, you ignore dead ball contact unless it rises to the level where it would be called intentional if the ball were live (or flagrant). 99% of rebounding shoves in the back simply don't qualify.

[Jurassic Referee]

Do you work on the principle of Bullsh!t baffles brains?

WOBW

[Camron Rust]

Originally Posted by Jurassic Referee

Do you work on the principle of Bullsh!t baffles brains?

WOBW

You actually read that? I didn't get past the first 2 lines when I saw that is response was longer than The Grapes of Wrath.

[Jurassic Referee]

Originally Posted by Camron Rust

You actually read that? I didn't get past the first 2 lines when I saw that is response was longer than The Grapes of Wrath.

Nope, life's too short to wade through something like that. I went with the Cliff Notes version..."I'm right, you're wrong and I'm smarter than you anyway....nanny nanny booboo."

But on the bright side, he did say it was his final response.

[M&M Guy]

Originally Posted by Jurassic Referee

But on the bright side, he did say it was his final response.

Wanna bet?

(He said it was his final response to Snaqs)

[Jurassic Referee]

Originally Posted by M&M Guy

He said it was his final response to Snaqs

I was gonna respond to Book 2 by asking Randy if he would elaborate.

[Adam]

It felt like I was looking at an actual act of congress.

[APG]

War and Peace making an appearance on the Officials Forum over a simple play that no one except the Randy Brown has an issue over. Imagine if we were discussing something that people actually argued over...say a recent interp...the server might not be able to handle the sheer volume that would be sure to ensue.

[RandyBrown]

Snaq: Your're alright. I wouldn't read it, either--not without a brandy, my easy-chair, and a fire, at least. Thanks for the time, again.

No, not "just" the rules. I'm saying, not absent them. Quoting/citing focuses thread participants on the exact language. It lets everyone know where everyone else is starting from. It gets us all talking about the sames thing: the rule(s), as written, as opposed to our own individual summaries of the rule(s) tangled with our individual interpetations of same. The latter makes it difficult to know if the speaker is basing a contention on the same rule(s) the reader may have in mind or on a different rule(s), or whether the contention is based solely on interpretation. Even if we all had every rule memorized, verbatim, we still wouldn't necessarily know which of them the speaker was using for support.

For example, you reference the dead-ball contact rule. I assume you are referring to 4-19-1's subnote, but I don't know that. I don't know the rules well enough to know that there isn't another rule mentioning dead-ball contact, or that I haven't since forgotten it if I once knew it. If this forum is only for those who have mastered the rules, then I'm not sure what you all have left to talk about. If it is also for those who have not mastered the rules, and doubt they ever will, then quotes/cites make the threads, and learning, more efficient.

As far as my specific use of "incidental" in the context of 4-19-1's subnote, you haven't moved me. I understand you haven't previously made the connection between the two, but that's not an argument. You don't argue that the subnote's contact does not conform to the stated definition of "incidental", nor do you provide a specific example of the subnote's contact that does not meet incidental's definition. I don't agree that just because the word "incidental" is not used in the subnote, the contact described doesn't fall under the larger definition of incidental. To flip it on you, they could have included the word, couldn't they have, without any change in substance, i.e., couldn't they have said, "This contact should be ruled incidental unless intentional or flagrant" and accomplished the same result? I don't see any difference. The definition of "incidental" does not limit itself to live-ball contact, that I noticed. To convince me, I think you would have to give me an example of the subnote's contact that did not meet incidental's definition. [Reminder: I'm not saying I'm not incorrectly using the term, only that I don't think you have shown me as much.]

Regarding intent of the rules, I think you miss. I agree with all that you say, factually. The Federation uses those facts to arrive at a very different prescription, however. They say you only see all that contact, because that is the monster you, yourselves, have created. Now, parents, coaches, ADs, and state associations are *****ing (actually, for at least the last five years in my state, I've been told). Your regional-difference remark is a symptom of what the Federation is telling us to right. Rules application should be uniform throughout. There should be no regional difference. They are saying there shouldn't be all that contact you speak of on the court, that officials are encouraging it, by not calling it, which then leads us to rough play. I know of no one, save a few AAU teams, perhaps, who appreciate the way we call the game these days. I don't know how old you are, but that contact you speak of didn't exist thirty years ago when I played, because officials didn't allow it. We've had this slow creep over the years. The Federation is pointing out that inconsequential contact (such as exists in your two play-situation examples) is different than incidental contact by their definition. Whether contact is incidental doesn't turn of whether there is advantage/disadvantage, even if officials were capable of discerning it--talk about arrogance, eh? For example, how do we know the coach wouldn't prefer the foul to an easy bucket? Maybe his strategy involves getting into the bonus as quickly as possible. We can't know. Incidental must be thought of in context with 10-6. Apply 10-6-2 to your two play situations, for instance, and try to argue incidental: "contact with an opponent which is permitted and which does not constitute a foul". The Federation is telling us that we have "gone off the reservation", that determining whether contact is incidental does not mean applying a advantage/disadvantage filter to 10-6. Think of the mayhem that could eventually lead to (some say we're already there). Literally, "incidental" is defined as that which occurs by chance or without intention, which is exactly how I would answer your two play-situations. If it wasn't by chance or without intention, 10-6, otherwise, we end up where we are, POE #1.

It's that slippery slope thing. You know the Federation's argument. I won't restate it any more than I already have. What I, personally, think the whole contact thing boils down to is a decision on the part of parents, ADs, and state associations as to whether they want to follow NFHS rules, or not. They don't have to. In the meantime, as certified officials wearing patches, I think we have to stick with exactly what is prescribed, rather than to relatively recent convention.

Agree with you on the 99% thing--I was speaking in the general sense of "intentional" at the time, which indirectly fed into what I just said above about incidental, I think--can't recall, now.

[Adam]

Originally Posted by RandyBrown

Snaq: Your're alright. I wouldn't read it, either--not without a brandy, my easy-chair, and a fire, at least.

No, I would need Aderrall . Nothing more, nothing less.

[Adam]

Your argument about the coach's strategy of getting into the bonus isn't valid. The advantage to look for is in the contact itself, not the punishment. You call the foul to punish the illegal advantage. I don't give a crap if he'd rather have the foul than the layup. It doesn't matter, because if his player has a wide open layup, then they weren't prevented from doing normal offensive movements. Therefore, by rule, no foul.

[Raymond]

Now I see my intuition was correct in ignoring this thread.