can someone help me to understand why they have "defend a goal" as an option in a coin toss situation. lets say the visitors win the coin toss and elect to defend a goal, the home team will get the ball. lets say the visitors elect defense, the home team gets the ball and then the visitors get to pick what goal they want to defend. now in the second half if the home team takes offense, the visitors get to pick what goal they want to defend again. it works out the same in both situations. i believe defending the goal is no different that just saying we want defense. why have that option of defending a goal if you win the coin toss in the rules? what am i missing. i feel it is useless? maybe i am missing something. if someone can clarify for me i would appreciate it.

If you have a great defense and the wind is blowing 40 miles an hour, taking the wind and going on Defense doesnt sound like a bad set-up. Especially in OT.

maybe you didnt understand my question. i am not debating why a team would elect to take defense, i want to know the difference between taking "defense" and "defending a goal".

You are incorrect. If the visitors select to go on defense (actually kickoff) the home team gets to choose the goal to defend. You say that the home will choose to take the ball. That choice has already been made when the visitors elected to kickoff. The home team will choose which goal to defend. In your example, the visitors got both choices & the home team got none.
These are two very distinct choices. If there is wind or sun that makes one direction more desirable over the other the team may want to choose the direction to go, making the choice of goal more important than being on offense or defense.

[Edited by STEVED21 on Oct 7th, 2004 at 08:30 AM]

The Sooners in the 80s used to choose to defend a particular goal all the time. The other team would then choose to receive. If the Sooners had elected simply to kick, the opponent would have gotten to select which direction the kick came from.

Choosing a side is NOT the same as choosing to kick. In the above scenario, the opponent COULD have opted to kick instead of receive, and might have had they been faced with a coaching team with similar thoughts as Oklahoma.

The choices I give at the coin toss are to defer, to receive, and which goal to defend. I leave out the choice to kick so that they will pick a goal to defend instead of giving all of the choices to the other team.

If a team chooses to defend a goal instead of kick then they have just also chosen, 99.999999% (statistical fact :D) of the time, to kick but they have also chosen which direction they will kick. The choice to kick is a very limiting choice because the other team gets to receive and they get to go in the direction they want.

There are only three choices in the coin toss. To defer choice until the second half, who will be kicking, and from which end of the field each team will be playing. When one team chooses to recieve the other team is, by default, the kicking team. They don't have to choose to kick the ball.

A couple of weeks ago the home team wins the toss. They chose to defend the south goal. I turn to the visiting captain and ask "Do you want to kick or receive" They chose receive and they also got to choice in the second half and they receive then as well. There was no wind or sun, I guess the home team like playing defense. Both teams were the last two years state champions ranked #10 and 15. Home team won 15 - 0

Warrenkicker...is this the only rule you choose to ignore or are there others?? I always give the captains all the choices available...if they choose to kick, I ask to make sure I heard right, but I always give all the options..I think that you are penalizing Team B by not giving team A all of the options....If they choose to kick, then team B should have the option of the goal to defend...by taking out the Kick option, you in effect take away options for B....

cmathews, out of curiousity, if A scores a TD, but were lined up in a illegal formation, do you also give the B captain all of his options? And if he chooses to decline the penalty do you make him stick with that?

I give them their best option first, and occasionally if it is the obvious choice I tell them what their best option is, just like the officials manual says to do. My point is that if you don't give the winner of the toss all 4 of the options, you are potentially taking an option away from the toss loser... If A wins the toss and elects to kick then B has the option of which goal to defend, which should be their right as it might make a difference... if you don't allow A to choose to kick, then you have given an advantage to team A...and we shouldn't do that...

I will tell the captain what the foul is and what we are going to do, but I don't give an option to a defensive captain when his choices are (1) TD or (2) penalty.

I give the choices to the captains at the coin toss as so: Would you like to receive, defer to the second half....and I slow down at that point to almost ensure I get something from the captain at that point. I will finish the sentence eventually. Also, if a team says they want to kick, I'm going to explain the consequence of that choice because they probably mean "defer". When I'm working kid football, I get the coach's preference in the pregame. And I wish we did that in HS games, too.

--Rich

--Rich

I do things very similar to Rich....I do make sure that kick and defend a goal are given at the end of the choices....

Nope, this is the only one. :D

By saying that this penalizes B is a reach. B would never have gotten both options without A's mistake. A's coach is going to come over and ask why he has to kick off both halves and wonder why you didn't stop his captains from doing that. I know it's not our job but that won't stop him from being mad.

The last time I had a team try to kick was a grade school game and even after clearly telling them multiple times what that would mean they still wanted to do it. After that I decided that NOBODY would have a problem with leaving out the kick option. Kids don't always do what they are told. Haven't had a problem since. If they want to kick then by all means they can.

2 years ago, mid-season, but the 1st week for the kids to be out there at the flip without any coaches. 11 year olds.

Team A wins, immediately says he wants to kick. We explain his options, and he says coach told me we want to kick. We reexplain that he can defer to the 2nd half, and then the other team will likely choose to receive - that way he gets to kick, but gets to receive, if they want, in the 2nd half. He agrees to defer. So I look to team B - do you want to receive, kick, or defend a goal.

"We want to kick."

Aaaaaarrrrggghhh!!!!!

We waive both coaches in (this being the 1st week and all, and us being very understanding), and reexplain. Team A defers, Team B receives. Got hearty thank you's from both coaches.

Warrenkicker,
I kid you not, we have had this happen 2 times this year at the Varsity level...How can you say you are not penalizing B...if there is an advantage to be gained by choosing a goal then you are penalizing them if you don't give the winner all the options...I don't disagree with questioning, or explaining, but to me you have to give them all the options if they win the toss...