Responding to sideline / bleacher chatter

Originally Posted by stegenref

I guess what I hated was that I wasn't able to come to my own conclusion before my thought process was interupted. I looked up and saw a kid pushing another kid in the back, but I didn't see the initial action, so I don't know if he was blocking him and the other kid turned around, but they were several yards off to the side of their initial position on the line of scrimmage (out of the neutral zone?), but still ON the LOS and the defender was in pursuit on a sweep. So I was going through all that thought process and now I'll never know if I would've thrown the flag or not if that fan hadn't yelled. In retrospect, I probably would've thrown the flag, but then I think I probably shouldn't have since I didn't see the start of the block.

We had the same problem in a freshman game a couple weeks ago, where a kid ended up on the turf needing medical attention (yes, the ambulance had to come on the field) because he was driven into the turf from behind. We were working three-man, and it went away from the linesman so the white hat and I (working U) had the play. By the time white hat and I both saw it, we weren't sure if it was initial action or not so neither of us flagged it. The coach of the kid that got hurt asked if either of us saw a block in the back (their bench was on the other sideline), we said we didn't see the initial action. Coach was ok with it, even though he had a kid laying on the turf. It happens, and not much you can do about it. Like the saying goes, "see what you call, call what you see."