Missing tailbone pad puts team in the playoffs

[JasonTX]

Originally Posted by LDUB

I don't know how it is in Texas, but around here most teams wear all the required equipment. Saying your are going to check one team (you are only checking players, not reserves) and find something wrong is a stretch



So you make sure that each player is wearing the 7 required pads in his pants? You really don't think that there is a chance that one of the 70 players on the team is only wearing 6 and you missed it before the game?

And if you're not calling a foul at the end of the game, what are you going to do? Allow this player to play when you know he isn't legal? That isn't a good idea. Your best choice would be to call the foul, if teams don't want to be penalized they can wear the required equipment.

I'm just saying I don't think it is right for the coach to tell the official what to enforce. Do we call everything "by the book". No. We use common sense in certain situations. The intent of any required equipment rule is to prevent a player from being injured. As I commented on another forum about this subject, I think that we should do everything possible to get the situation corrected. If we've gone all game long without doing penalizing them and apparently that coach knew about it all game long and waited until the end of the game to point it out is just plain wrong. If he was truly concerned about the well-being of that player then he would have pointed it out when he first noticed it. I'd have to have some proof he wasn't wearing one. Call a timeout and walk the kid to his bench to "check" and see if he has the pad on. Don't just take the other coaches word. Let them correct it and move on with the game. Then go to the other coach and tell him, "Coach we appreciate you pointing out the potentional unsafe condition of that player. Safety is our number one goal and we got it corrected thanks to your help. Without you pointing that out he could have suffered a serious injury. The coach of the other team asked me to thank you looking out for his players." At least under NCAA rules, if we are going to flag this then it will be just a charged timeout to that team and only a 5 yard penalty if they don't have timeouts.