"It gets called all the time? OK, prove it."

How about "aren't calling it. ever." Can't help but notice that's not exactly provable either.

If you can't find one instance anywhere on the Internet, that's good enough for me.

Likewise

How about from your own forum? From Football/9-yard marks thread, comment #13:

High school. Different animal. And you'll find it enforced differently in various areas of the country. We only flag it if the defense fails to match up.

Just to clear something up, the 9 yard nine marks infraction is not an offside foul, it is a foul for illegal formation.

The announced foul was offside. I guarantee you that if it was an illegal formation foul, they would have announced it as such.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6oC...ature=youtu.be

Here is the video of the play. Notice that the tick marks at the bottom? Those are the 9 yard marks. You have maybe one or two players not inside them.

Perhaps a technical infraction but not one you'll see called on a kickoff in college. The approved mechanic is if you're going to do anything about it, is to tell the players to get inside the nine yard mark to make them legal.

You need to trust the people that have actually officiated games using NCAA rules (I have as well) when we say that isn't the call.

That's also something specific to North Carolina because in high school, there's not even a 9 yard mark requirement on free kicks.

Yup.

For someone who's never, EVER, been anywhere near a situation like this, I find it odd you think you have the perspective to tell us what "most likely" happened.

As someone more familiar to this situation ... I promise you the ACC did not announce ANYTHING before talking to the officials - likely for quite a long time.

OK... you're on a forum where the vast majority of the people posting have either BEEN in this situation, or have talked often to people who have been in this situation, and have likely discussed this sort of situation in numerous clinics and training sessions.

You have NO perspective to offer here other than that of some guy on a couch who thinks he knows better.

Yet you insist you are right without any shred of evidence (no ... another forum filled with other guys on couches does not count as evidence). Do you realize how ridiculous this sounds?

You're being told, by people who WOULD KNOW, that this doesn't get called in the scenario being discussed.

My confusion is that this wasn't an error of omission (not seeing something that is there), but error of commission (seeing something that isn't there). When a hold happens, it's easy to say an official "missed" it because he didn't see it. But when a hold doesn't happen, and there's a flag on the ground..? These, I think, are the most frustrating and confusing.

So, the official saw something. I don't know what it is, but he saw something. Like in a hold, the official saw a ball of jersey in a player's hand. Or the sometimes case where you see a player go flying onto his face, and the official turns and assumes that he was pushed in the back. And it wasn't a "miss," at least how I see it. (I know, I know, "miss" is a generic term for not seeing something there and for seeing something not there, but I'm not a fan of the terminology.)

And frankly from the replay, I don't know what he could have seen. Perhaps he thought the kicker's foot was some other player's foot?

Also, the kick was boxed in (like we always do for onside kicks). So there was an official on both sides of the ball. Since the far side official didn't throw a flag, I suspect it had to be a player on the near side. And the closest one is the second from the bottom. Perhaps he saw a hand or finger break the plane at the kick?

Anyway, without a camera looking down the 35 yard line, and no statement forthcoming from the official with the flag, we'll never know what he saw or what he thought he saw.