What I do think about the play that I saw on tv is that he didn't just throw the ball up in the air the way you would normally think of throwing a ball in the air, but just flipped it up and over his shoulder after getting in the endzone. If the intention of that rule is to call a play like that excessive celebration then the NCAA needs to rethink their ideas.
The whole celebration penalty, which I supported when they put it in place way back when, but now it seems to be so unevenly enforced and sometimes to me unfairly enforced that the benefit is no longer there. They need to rethink the whole thing. Terry
This is the section of Rule 9 that applied in the Locker case I think it's pretty clear that this had to be called.
Then there is this take by Mike Bianchi: http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/sports_bianchi/2008/09/quit-whining-mi.html
Gip, I saw that explanation on TV. It doesn't leave any room for judgement. It's cut & dried. Terry, this situation notwithstanding, I agree completely with your assessment of the Pac 10 refs.
Ralph I loved the way your kicker made those plays!! Also cool imbedded videos of your points!! As far as those end of games deals, scoring a late TD kicking a FG whatever they are always open to criticism. I remember a game with Navy that we were trying to run out the clock on a game we were up by about 4 scores but Navy kept calling timeout, so Lou tossed another TD on them. It wasn't well recieved. And I'm not talking about with 3 or 4 minutes left I talking about being down 4 scores with under a minute to play. JoePa had something similar in a game with Rutgers back in the early 90's, but he justified it by saying he had all backups in and the kid ran the wrong play... a pass for a TD. Terry
Well, I guess I still have to disagree a bit... If the rule HAS to be enforced, then always enforce it...I watched a lot of college games this weekend, and some replayed games after reading the above discussion and specifically watched what the scoring player did. Do you have any idea how many time the player scoring the touchdown flipped the ball away (not near the dead-ball spot) and jumped into his teammate's arms? Almost every time... In fact, I would bet that the ball the Washington player flipped up ended up pretty near the dead-ball spot since he threw it straight up...I saw several horizontal flips that weren't called, but surely involved "requiring the ref to retrieve" them. Mind you, these weren't spikes, spins, showoff throws to the stands, or anything like that...they were just "flip the ball away and hug your teammate" type thing...the same thing we saw in that play. So I still say...the rule is stupid...the enforcement is ridiculously inconsistent... You want to argue that this official got it right and "had to enforce it"...fine...I see your point...but then all the other officials are NOT doing their jobs.
As I heard it - subject to correction because my hearing is suspect - it is a Pac 10 rule. No mention was made of it being an NCAA rule.
It's an NCAA Rule. But I did read an article on ESPN that quoted Dave Parry the National Director of officals for the NCAA or something like that, where he said rules were always open to interpretation, but then he followed up that Locker broke the rule so badly it didn't leave room for interpretation. It's a stupid rule.