I've read enough about the illegal pass to the guy in the endzone. So I thought I'd post some plays that really happened to me on Friday night and leave out the way we handled/enforced them.

(1) Running play that gained about 12 yards. On the line, U throws a flag for defensive holding -- defensive lineman figured the best way to get off a block was to grab two hands of jersey and throw the offensive lineman down. Enforce the penalty according to NF rules.

Interesting thing about this -- after the drive that resulted in a touchdown, a captain informed me that the head coach wanted to talk to me about this. Being a generally approachable guy, I went over and the coach was IRATE -- he told me that a defender can do anything he wants to get off a block. At this point I realized that I wasn't going to get anywhere, so I repeated what the foul was and headed back to the goal line for the kickoff.

As I was running back, I heard the coach yell, "I've been coaching for SEVEN years and I've never heard of such a thing!" If you're going to use something like that, you'd think you'd wait until the number was a bit higher than SEVEN. The team probably won't win a game this season, but it's only their second year playing -- previously they were part of a coop.

(2) Kickoff. Visiting team kicker kicked 5 of 7 kickoffs for touchbacks, BTW. On this kick, the ball bounced at about the five yard line and skipped into the endzone. I'm signalling the touchback, when the back judge comes up to me and says he hays a five yard face mask somewhere near midfield. Enforce the penalty.

We were back to short sleeves on Friday night -- week 7 in Wisconsin and we were in short sleeves. Amazing. Just the week before I was putting anything on I could find.

--Rich

NF:
1) enforce defensive hold from end of A's run
2) I will assume the ball was still live when the foul occurred. A foul during a loose ball (free kick) play is enforced from the previous spot and rekick if accepted. You didn't say who the foul was on.

My apology. The penalty was on the kicking team and occurred before the ball broke the plane of the goal line. After the BJ told me what he had, the first question I had was whether the foul occurred before my whistle (since he wasn't watching the ball, obviously).

--Rich

Halftime
 

Wind - 20 mph, temp 65*F, 1 1/2" rain

The coaches were wearing slicker-suits with hoods, of course we were not.

The visiting team was on the field in their free kick formation after the half-time break. The other team was just coming out of the locker room.

The coach is going ballistic about this, and wants me to throw a delay of game flag. He accuses me of purposly delaying the game in favor of the other team.

"Wait a minute there coach, you're standing here with a rain coat, and you're accusing me of delaying this game?"

The other team did their mandatory 3-minute warm-up then we kicked off.

First half ended 8:00, second half kick off 8:17