Hats off to our brother officials in Football

[Raymond]

Originally Posted by jTheUmp

Apples and oranges. Football allows 'live ball' substitutions (between downs), basketball does not.

In basketball:
1) you don't let the ball become live if a team has 4 (or 6) players on the court.
2) If a 6th player enters during a live ball, you have a technical foul.
3) If a player leaves the court (for an unauthorized reason) during a live (or dead) ball, you have a technical foul.

In football:
1) you don't let a ball become live on a free kick if there are not 11 players on the field for each team.
2) If a 12th player enters during a down or if there are more then 11 players participating at the start of a down, you have a foul (illegal subsitution or illegal participation, depending on the ruleset and exact circumstances).
3) If a player leaves the field during a down, you have no penalty (unless he returns during the same down and participates or he was blocked out of bounds and returns at the earliest opportunity).


You're trying to compare basketball situation 1 to football situation 2. In situation 1, football and basketball are identical.

Question as this has come up a lot since the game. After the Giants got flagged for that 12 man penalty if they had done it again on the next play would it have been unsportsman-like conduct penalty or just another 5-yard penalty? Or after the first penalty would the officials not let the ball be ready for play if the Giants still had 12 men on the field?

Was there ever a time when having 12 men participating in the play was a different penalty than just having 12 men on the field (1 player running to get off)?

[mbyron]

Originally Posted by BadNewsRef

Question as this has come up a lot since the game. After the Giants got flagged for that 12 man penalty if they had done it again on the next play would it have been unsportsman-like conduct penalty or just another 5-yard penalty? Or after the first penalty would the officials not let the ball be ready for play if the Giants still had 12 men on the field?

Was there ever a time when having 12 men participating in the play was a different penalty than just having 12 men on the field (1 player running to get off)?

Some folks seem to think it was no accident that the Giants played that down with 12. That sounds a little conspiracy-theory to me, but it's possible. I don't know NFL rules inside and out, but I'm not aware of any "automatic" upgrade for a second offense.

In NFHS football, illegal substitution is a 5-yard penalty (think player not getting off the field before the snap), whereas if the 12th man participates, it's illegal participation, a 15-yard penalty. If the Giants' play had happened in a HS game, the foul would have been IP.