Penalty Choices

[Wes]

How much explanation do you give captains regarding penalty choice when the choice is obvious?

We try to make the choice so obvious that the captain cant screw it up. We use things like:

"Five free yards- do you want them."
"We are going to count the touchdown, if that's OK with you."
"You have the play back here or the ball way up there and the down over."

Etc

I would be interested to know what other crews do and how you phrase penalty choices.

[jimbulger1]

Our WH does that

[mcrowder]

Depends on the age of the kids. At Varsity, we are probably pretty simplistic - not giving anything to them: "If you decline, you get the touchdown. If you take the penalty, it's 1st and 5 on the 23."

For younger kids, you steer them more.

On tack-on penalties (5 free yards), you just walk it.

A white hat I worked with last year told the captains before the coin flip that he would give them their best option first. By dropping that hint, that would "steer" them to think during the game to listen to what he says first.

[ABoselli]

I give choices if there is a real choice, such as a hold on a play that was dumped for a loss.

Penalties on the offense in which there was a long gainer - I don't bother asking.

[nvfoa15]

I don't talk to captains when the choice is obvious. A runs for 15 yards and get talked by the face mask - I ain't askin', I'm tackin'. A runs for 8 yards and there is holding on the LOS - I ain't askin', I'm walkin'. A commits an illegal shift on an incomplete pass - I'm askin' 3/8 or 2/13?

[SJoldguy]

I'm a LJ at varsity but i mostly do Referee at lower levels. In youth league games I go as far to say, "thats a false start and you want it". If it is a real choice I say to them "this is a tough chioce. " Then, I give the best choice first.

[cmathews]

While I certainly can see the point of not askin, but tackin....I think it is a good idea to keep communicating with the captains...I try to steer them, I usually do something on the long gainer with a hold behind it, I will usually start off by saying, you're gonna want to take this right??...but I think not talking to the captains is a bad idea as you may need to communicate with them for another reason later, and keeping the channels open and positive is a good idea at least in my book

[parepat]

Situation last week. I am working LM and have an offensive pass interference on 3rd down. BJ covered my flag and I went and told WH. I then went back, got my flag and headed over to my chains. The next thing I know the WH is marking the ball ready for play with no walk off. I run in (Ohio had an experiment last year with no loss of down on OPI- I thought he had forgotten that the experiment was over) Anyway, WH told me that B's captain declined penalty...twice. B's coach went crazy. I'm not certain our WH handled this correctly. Thoughts?

[Snake~eyes]

Originally posted by parepat
Situation last week. I am working LM and have an offensive pass interference on 3rd down. BJ covered my flag and I went and told WH. I then went back, got my flag and headed over to my chains. The next thing I know the WH is marking the ball ready for play with no walk off. I run in (Ohio had an experiment last year with no loss of down on OPI- I thought he had forgotten that the experiment was over) Anyway, WH told me that B's captain declined penalty...twice. B's coach went crazy. I'm not certain our WH handled this correctly. Thoughts?

Sounds good to me. If I start giving the options and they want to decline penalty I'm not going to argue. Now below HS I probaly would try and stop them from declining.

[Ed Hickland]

Dan Dierdorf once told the story of Jerry Markbreit telling them they didn't want a choice when they made a choice to decline the penalty in order to get the statistics for a player.

In my pregame with the coaches I let them know the captains will not get a verbal "if you decline" on obvious penalties. If there is a real choice the captain get turned in the direction of the coach while I explain the choices.

The thing I like to do is make sure the cpatain does not make a mistake and take the wrong choice. Someone is going to say our job is not to coach and that is correct. But if you assist the captain of both teams with the coices that does not give an advanatge to either team.

[jimbulger1]

im sure in the most recent case the WH went "are you sure"

so he gave them one more chance to change his mind

[parepat]

Thanks for the input guys. I think the officials manual says that we are prevent the captain from making a foolish choice. (I am paraphrasing here) I don't know that there was much of a choice here consideing the loss of down.

[Ed Hickland]

Originally posted by BushRef

OK, then, what do you do at the coin toss, when you have a team that is in it's second year of existence. You flip the coin and the experienced team chooses to defer. You turn to the other captain and give them their options, and the elect to kick, which means, in all likelihood, they will kick BOTH halves? Do you do anything to fix this?

THen, to add insult to injury, as you turne the teams so their backs face their goals, one of the captains on the newer program turns to the speaking captain and says, "What does it mean when they defer?"

Don't let that happen!

Let's say the experienced team has chosen to defer to the second half. You first response is to step out and signal, "Team A has won the toss and elected to defer their choice to the second half."

Then back to the players, you ask, "Would you like to receive a kick?" Now is this player going to say, "No, sir, we want to kick the ball."

And you say, "You want to kick the ball this half and give them the choice for the second half?"

The captain answers, "Yes, sir, that's what the coach said to do."

At that point you have used persuasion and it failed, let them kick off.

That happened two seasons ago. We questioned the coach and reaffirmed his captains choices and they promptly lost the game 61-0 and the team had a new coach next season.

As my granddaddy once said, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

[cmathews]

Ed,
Just one more thing, they still do have the option to defend a goal if they choose .. this happened in our first game this year...the toss winner chose to kick, because his coach told them they wanted to be on defense if they won the toss....the white hat said are you sure you don't want to defer?? he said yep we want to kick...so it was partially the coaches fault too LOL