Opinion

[MJT]

Nice to see you TXMike!

[Texas Aggie]

Working white hat in a JV game with crew that I dont work with much. A runs ball for 20 yard gain. During the run A2 blocks B2 in the back at about the end of run. I stop clock to confer with official who threw flag and noticed that the Linesman also threw a flag at the LOS. The Linesman tells me that his flag was for a false start. I told him that his penalty was a dead ball foul and he should have blown it dead. How would you handle the enforcement of this? Thanks

Forgive me if I missed something, but I don't quite understand the problem here. Sure, we missed blowing the play dead, but we can't go back and deaden it once its run, so we enforce the false start penalty, as we would if it were, say, illegal motion. That would be B's choice of penalties.

Besides, if I'm the white hat here, I probably tell the HL, "you mean, you flagged him for illegal motion, right?"

If, for example, we have fouls on both teams on the play instead of just A, we have to bite the bullet and offset. I don't think the intent of the false start/dead ball foul rule is to give B a free foul if we miss blowing the play dead. You are going to get yourself into a lot of trouble over analyzing this and saying, "since the play should have been blown dead, it never happened and we enforce the false start only and ignore the rest of the play."

[TXMike]

You may be able to get away with that at the lower levels but not at the upper levels. Tht is NOT how it is to be handled. You admit your mistake and deal with it.