Team Conferences
 

Saw something new in our game Friday night.

Team A commits a live ball foul. They know the foul is against them and notify the wing official on their sideline that they want a timeout. While the officials are conferring on the foul and notifying Team B captains of their options, the coach for Team A calls his team over to the sideline (knowing the time out is not granted until completion of penalty enforcement). The coach for Team B sees this and argues Team A is getting extra time for their time out. The wing official on the B sideline explains it is legal for all players to go to the sideline between downs as long as they stay on the field. Team A did this twice during the first half.

How would you handle this situation? Would you handle it any differently if the Team A conference only took place during penalty enforcement and not planning to take a time out? I'll share how we handled it after hearing from some of you.

We had the same thing on a measurement. Team A requested a time out after the ball was dead and then requested a measurement. The WH held off granting the timeout until after the measurement. Team B went to the sideline for a conference and the team A coach got all upset that they were conferencing during the measurement.

The WH then made a bigger mess by interupting the measurement to get team B back, doing the measurement and then granting A the time out.

I think he would have been better off finishing the measurement, asking A if they still wanted a time out and then asking coach A what he wanted to discuss.

Our challenge was during injury timeouts, the coaches would send water out to the players wthout conferring with the officials. We need to discuss those things as a crew so we're more in sync with all that is happening on the field. I'd chase the water gremlins off the field and the other team has had their water people on the field as soon as the kid went down.

On hot nights, rather than chasing the "water gremlins" off, we call for them as soon as we take an offical's time out for an injured player. We also talk to them prior to the game just like we do with the ball bays and tell them to come on out whenever we take an offical's timeout for an injury even if we forget to call for them.

How do I handle that situation? Tell B that it is legal and that he can do it too.