Crap Tactic: What Would You Do?

[bigjohn]

g. Make any other contact with an opponent which is deemed unnecessary
and which incites roughness

c. Flagrant — a foul so severe or extreme that it places an opponent in danger
of serious injury, and/or involves violations that are extremely or persistently
vulgar or abusive conduct.

[PS2Man]

If that was the case then the rules would make this a flagrant foul all by itself. Any other part of the field this play is completely legal.

[ajmc]

I think NF 2.16.2.c (The NFHS definition of "Flagrant") is a perfect example of, yet another, NFHS rule that recognizes and relies on the common sense, understanding of the game and judgment of competent officials to appropriately enforce rules designed to achieve specific, broad objectives.

The ambiguity is no accident, rather it provides the flexibility necessary to match a specific action against a general, reasonable to understand, standard that can be applied to a never ending variety of different actions.

That judgment is placed, soley, in the hands of the individual official observing a particular action, and anyone who dares to speculate about how close they can get to where that fine line may have been drawn, does so at the risk of great peril.

[OverAndBack]

Originally Posted by bigjohn

g. Make any other contact with an opponent which is deemed unnecessary and which incites roughness

You could say unnecessary, sure.

c. Flagrant — a foul so severe or extreme that it places an opponent in danger of serious injury, and/or involves violations that are extremely or persistently vulgar or abusive conduct.

And I guess you could say flagrant, yeah. Now, it doesn't say a tackle or a block so severe that it places an opponent in danger of serious injury. It may be overlooked in history, but I am not sure a foul was called on this play, was it?



The block or tackle can be clean and just really, really hard. That's just physics.

The reason the hit is a foul is because of where it occured on the field (less than five yards from the spot of the kick, and on the kicker). Is the same exact hit five yards downfield, or on a cornerback if you're a fullback leading a sweep, a foul simply by virtue of the impact of the hit itself?

I can't say saying, "Now, now, son, don't hit your opponent quite so hard, what do you think this is, football?"

Football is an aggressive/semi-barbaric game by its very nature. People get hit hard. It's not always a foul, much less flagrant. If it's at the head or the knee or late or a Charles Martin situation, absolutely.

Bottom line: this was an asshat move. I don't think there's any question why it was done, but we're not supposed to be mind-readers all the time. The hit is a foul because of where and when it occured. If you wanted to call flagrant and eject him, you may very well be within your rights and may very well be able to sleep quite well. But you might have some 'splainin' to do. If you can make your case and the powers that be are with you, great.

Like I said, though, there are also other ways around the situation and ways to stop it from happening again that don't necessarily have to come from us. Coaches have a responsibility to keep their teams from being put in disadvantageous situations, too.