Opinion
 

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

My personal approach is to enforce the false start and let the linesman know that this is a learning experience - kill the play, even if it is late.

I say you have to take your lumps and enforce the false start. Opologize to A but say that the play should not have happened due to the false start. Then hope that no one was injured.

I will have to agree to enforce to false start also.

I agree with enforcing the false start. Now to add a twist to the play. Instead of the block in the back you have:

(a) A hard helmet to helmet contact by team B.

or

(b) Team A is flagged for twisting a facemask.

Ignore or enforce as dead ball fouls? Technically the false start makes the ball dead, not the whistle, so by the book any foul that occurs after the ball is dead is a dead ball foul. In the case of the block in the back, I don't see a problem with ignoring it unless it was vicious. The examples I have added, I'd be inclined to enforce those as dead ball fouls.

Interesting question Jason. I'd be hard pressed to enforce any contact foul, but may enforce a USC. The problem is, if you enforce any other foul, it would have to be enforced as a DB foul and that is pretty harsh considering the play should not have occured. Now a USC could have occured at any time with or without a play, so that is my rationale. I'm interested in what others have to say regarding your twist.

BTW Jason, are you working this board more cuz McGriffs is so spammed up?

Yep. Hopefully McGriffs will come back up. Lots of good posters haven't found their way here or to refstripes.com

I'm really missing McGriffs. This is my first year of college ball and (some of) the NCAA guys over there were top-notch.

Not to steal the traffic of this site, but most of the McGriff members are in the site I mentioned above.

Like you, the UC will be enforced. On contact fouls, if it is a "normal" football play, i.e. BIB, BBW, clip, etc. not gonna be enforced. If it is a flagrant PF, will be enforced and player will be DQ'd.

Then you might want to check out (http)://(www).(gmcgriff).(com)/(refonline)/ if you can read between the ((())). Hopefully this helps keep the new board off of the spam engines. Just go to football discussion.

Nice to see you TXMike!

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."

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.