Statistics for blocked punt

[Texas Aggie]

Radio: a lot of stat stuff is built into the baseball rules, so those guys over there may know quite a bit about baseball stats, but in general football officials don't concern ourselves much with stats. The closest many of us come is turning in foul reports, which is for our benefit and not the stat guys. A lot of folks think bean bags are dropped so the stat guys will know, for example, how long the punt return was. In fact, its strictly for our own benefit in knowing enforcement spots and nothing more. It wouldn't be unusual to see 2 bean bags down on a punt.

2 or 3 years ago, I was up in the press box and a newspaper guy asked about the 2 bean bags. I told him what they were for and he was rather surprised. Later in the game, there was an interception inside the 5 and the back judge (very good that night) correctly dropped a bag. "I guess he forgot to bag the other inteceptions," the reporter said. I got to explain the momentum rule.