Freedom of Movement 10-6-12

[JetMetFan]

Originally Posted by just another ref

Will this ultimately be treated differently than a lot of other things in the book? Enforcement/interpretation of a rule varies tremendously from game to game and official to official. The biggest problem I have here is the conflict between the black and white language of the rule and the concept of advantage/disadvantage. Late in the game with fouls to give B1 can body up aggressively. If A1 starts to turn the corner on him just give a couple of quick touches and the play starts over again. Or will this raise the question of calling intentional for the two quick touches?

Funny, but we didn't have a whole lot of "yeah, but..." conversations about the guidelines when they told us to call them in NCAAW last year. The rule says the second touch is a foul. Period. There's no time element. There's no worry about whether B1 does it just for the sake of not being beat on a drive. There's no RSBQ, at least when it comes to this rule.

The fact enforcement/interpretation varies from game to game and official to official is why they put the guidelines in effect in the first place. The goal is to get rid of those variances because we (collectively) hadn't been doing a great job using our judgment. If everyone just follows the letter of the law as opposed to trying to figure out the "intent" or "spirit" of the rule on their own, the rule works. If we as a collective don't do that it all goes into the toilet. It's that simple.

As to the idea of calling an intentional foul because B1 puts two quick touches on A1 when A1 beats them on a move, 4-19-3a & c are really the only rules that could be applied and both might be considered a stretch. Let's not turn simple math into calculus. If B1 wants to do that, (s)he will be able to do that a maximum of five times. My guess is B1's HC will have them sitting for a while if (s)he pulls that move more than once unless it's an end-of-game situation.