No auto 1st down for DPI burns a team

[JRutledge]

Originally Posted by MD Longhorn

Every high school official I work with would have no problem with this... then again, I'm in Texas.

Originally Posted by bisonlj

Know that enforcement well but never heard it called the "umpire rule".

Keep in mind when I say, "High School Officials" I am not talking about people from those states. For one I bet many of the people played in those states are have a familiarity to what happens in those rules. And I am also not talking about just officials handling the game from a pure understanding standpoint. I think a problem would be how many officials you have on the field as well. NCAA has all the time. I do not want 3 newer officials working a Sophomore B game and having to decide things like 10 second run offs and substitution situations and 40 and 25 second clocks, when we have no play clock at all. Yeah, I do not want that one.

Originally Posted by bisonlj

I think Texas and Massachuessets have proven that high school officials CAN learn NCAA rules. Those of us who first learn HS rules and then learn NCAA rules may get confused because they are different than what we know. If you start with NCAA rules they are all just new. It's not a major issue for me but I definitely enjoy working games under NCAA rules over HS rules.

You say it works, but are you sure? Those are relative small samples to the country. We have a lot of guys in our state that cannot handle rules when they come from the other levels. Just the horse collar rule alone was so inconsistently enforced and misapplied, even with clarifications. It would take several years to not have simple mistakes as people would have some expectation of NCAA rules from all sides. And even when you try to incorporate college philosophies, officials have a hard time because "The rule did not say it that way." There are a lot of philosophies that would have to be adopted as well.

The most important part would be the blocking and other safety rules that would not exist. I showed a video where officials called a BBW on a legal play and a TD was called back. Now imagine a 10 to 2 block and how that would be officiated by a similar crew? Then I was talking to an HS official that wants to get into college that wanted to enforce a rule on socks being decorative at a college game and could not understand why it was not called by others. Yep, that is the guy you would have to constantly deal with. Be careful what you ask for.

Peace