A Salute to Kansas State

Imagine if something like this happened to Kansas State basketball!

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I guess he didn't have this on his Chistmas wish list this year...





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OR, he could have played the game like Emmett Smith and Barry Sanders...hand the ball to the ref and run back to the huddle for the next play.

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Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda!

All the Woulda-Coulda-Shouldas
Playin' ginst the O'Men,
Talkin' 'bout the things
He woulda coulda shoulda been...
But his Woulda-Coulda-Shouldas
All ran with the kid,
thumbed one little Did.

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I agree Rob. Referee shoulda shown restraint himself. No one would have said a thing.

That might be one of the worst calls in college football history. Does this official realize he is working a game played by human beings not robots. He directly affected the outcome of the game with a totally incorrect interpretation of the rules. If that was excessive celebration so is every time a quarterback sack occurs.

This guys should definitely be punished somehow. Fined, lose games, suspended, something.

It was less celebration than the average sack or big hit that would occur in the 2nd qtr. Of a game played in October.

And the ref said to the player, "wrong choice buddy,". That shows you what type of ref you are dealing with right there. The kind you never want.

Terrible call!! Almost every other touchdown shown on Sports Center had a bigger celebration than that play.

It's funny this comes up after I just watched the ESPN special on 30 for 30, "The U" on University of Miami. I remember being one of the intolerant bastages that hated the U and thought terrible things about them...as I watched from my upper middle class fully furnished basement in an all white suburb of Chicago.

I felt a bit ashamed of myself as I watched, and saw who those kids were, and what they came from and why they were who they were.

When the NCAA instituted the anit celebration rules and showed the video to the U team, one of the players commented, "It looked like our highlight film".

I'm all about not showing up your opponent, but I think I've found more room for fun too. Kids are supposed to be excited. Any ref that can't understand that, shouldn't ref.

I was that guy too CPLZ. And then I saw that 30 for 30 and had the same reaction. Think about it. You just scored the touchdown that will give your team a chance to win the game with a 2 point conversion. All you do is salute the crowd and turn and hand the ball to the ref. Wow

Next year its a spot foul. Which means no score. A 15 yard penalty from the line of scrimmage where the play started. How about some common sense? How about some understanding what excessive is?

In my last couple years of officiating high school football, there was a big emphasis on celebrations.

My attitude was:
Spontaneous joy--no foul (just don't drag it out).
Taunting or showing off--throw the flag.

I thought the letter of the law and the examples we were shown at our training sessions went a little too far. But as long as I was getting paid to officiate the games, I was obliged to call it the way they wanted it called, whether I liked it or not.

I do wonder how college officials were instructed on this rule this year.

It's also worth pointing out that one of the principles of officiating is to make the correct call without regard to the game situation (I know this goes against conventional wisdom, but it is an established principle).

This official might have hated the call as much as anyone but felt it was his duty to make it based on how he was trained.

quote:

This official might have hated the call as much as anyone but felt it was his duty to make it based on how he was trained.

If so, then he was "trained" in exact contradiction to the letter of the rule, as I describe above. What possible training could result in a simple salute being interpreted to be any one of the four things that define excessive celebration?

Maybe they should allow reveiw on these type things so they can get it right. Sometimes on personal foul calls they flag the guy responding to a cheap shot. The one team gets penalized while the cheap shot becomes an advantage. Replay would solve that issue.

I wonder if the referees that made the K State call think they did the "right" thing today after seeing the play over and over.

quote:

Originally posted by Rob Kremer:

quote:

This official might have hated the call as much as anyone but felt it was his duty to make it based on how he was trained.

If so, then he was "trained" in exact contradiction to the letter of the rule, as I describe above. What possible training could result in a simple salute being interpreted to be any one of the four things that define excessive celebration?

Rob,
Having sat through a bunch training sessions on "areas of emphasis for this year," it doesn't strain my imagination to think that their definition of "choreographed" could have been broad enough to cover anything that looks like it was planned in advance, no matter how simple, brief or tasteful--even though in literal and common sense terms "choreographed" means a planned dance--like the Ickey Shuffle or the Dirty Bird.

Again, I don't know what guidance he was given, and I don't know if his call comported with that guidance. I'm just saying there might be some background worth knowing. The blame may lie with some committee somewhere more than the official. Just offering the possibility.

You would need to drop 30 or 40 flags per game if this is an excessive celebration. I tried to poste the you tube but can't get it, it's under k state salute.


I tell you what Syracuse gets screwed on this deal too. They played a great game and all anybody will talk about is this crazy call... They may have stpped the 2 pointer or won in overtime...

Absolutely ridiculous. That ref should be ashamed of himself. Have you seen some of the other "celebrations" in this years bowl games that didn't draw flags? How about Justin Blackmon's TD?

If saluting is an excessive celebration, the NCAA has lost it's frickin' mind! It's not like he pulled a pen out of his shoe and signed the ball. This is a game played by humans. Let them show some emotion.

I hope that ref got 4 flat tires on the drive home last night and a bunch of one fingered salutes.

quote:

I'm just saying there might be some background worth knowing. The blame may lie with some committee somewhere more than the official. Just offering the possibility.

Well, perhaps. It's a pretty sure thing that we will never know that background. But if this was consistent with the training he received, then pretty much every other ref during the bowl games have been disregarding that training.

But at some level, it doesn't matter. If the culprit was this one ref acting on his own, he should be held accountable, If it was the training he got that classifies such demonstrations as excessive, then the idiots who determine the policy should be held accountable.

What will likely happen is that no one will be held accountable at all, and that is frustrating.

It was interesting to contrast that action and call to the action and non-call in the TN - UNC game. (Bray's salute after the TD completion in OT)

Or maybe Brays sloat slash gesture after the TD in OT?

quote:

Originally posted by Swampboy:
Again, I don't know what guidance he was given, and I don't know if his call comported with that guidance. I'm just saying there might be some background worth knowing. The blame may lie with some committee somewhere more than the official. Just offering the possibility.

I would suggest you go to youtube and watch that, if you haven't...use K State Salute and it will come up. In the comments underneath the video, one of the posters brings up the Tennessee game where apparently (I didn't see it) the player saluted three times and did a dance and didn't get flagged.

What is unique, is that in both the games we're talking about, they used Big 10 officials, so that might negate the theory that they were instructed to call it that tight.

CPLZ,

Please understand that I'm not defending the call. I'm not even defending the official. I'm just saying this isn't a "Did the ball break the plane" kind of question that can be settled with a replay.

Consistency in officiating is very hard to achieve. There's a lot of back and forth during the season about how to handle different situations. Different trainers present material slightly differently to different gatherings of officials. The officials accept or reject or understand or fail to understand what they've been told in varying degrees.

I remember one year the state made a big deal about enforcing how many coaches were in the box and keeping them off the field. Some officials flat out said, "My job is to worry about the players in front of me not the coaches behind me." Some said they'd enforce it only if the coaches hindered/distracted the official or the chain gang. Some tried to enforce exactly what was taught and got a lot of flak each week from coaches who didn't like getting flagged for actions that had been permitted the week before. A whole lot more tried to find some middle ground they could safely inhabit. Our strictness was evaluated when senior officials rated our games. It came up at the officials meetings just about every week, and additional discussion seldom contributed to a common understanding. Some officials were directly told they wouldn't get playoff games if they didn't start enforcing the rule.

Celebrations present the same kind of problem. The conferences want to get them under control. There are a lot of officials who have been doing things a long time and have pretty strong ideas about what they will accept. It is very hard to get all of them on the same page. When they aren't, it's not necessarily the fault of any one official. Just suggesting we might want to withhold judgment on a situation whose facts we don't know.

the play

Ok, RJM, I admit it.

Even as a Mizzou fan, I wouldn't have thrown that flag.

Since you are a mizzou fan if it would have been ku instead of k-state you could have just outright tackled the kid before he got to the end zone

I finally watched the play several hours after I posted....looked pretty tame to me.

Not sure I'd blame the ref (in fact I think there were two flags thrown) but more the actual rule or the rule makers.

Maybe there needs to be a little more discretion as to what is really excessive. This didn't appear to be.

quote:

Originally posted by trojan-skipper:
Since you are a mizzou fan if it would have been ku instead of k-state you could have just outright tackled the kid before he got to the end zone

Maybe just a little inadvertent bump to slow him down.

You could argue that the act of scoring a TD brings attention to the player and therefore should be penalized for entering the end zone. This play will be used in the future for training how not to make a call. Unfortunate.

Just watched Mark Ingram celebrate a TD with a chest thump and a double finger point to the stands. Then watched an Alabama LBer hammer an MSU running back and celebrate a little and bring attention to himself.

Neither was flagged and neither should have been.

The referee in the KSU game should be thoroughly embarrassed with himself. But I doubt it given his comment to the player on the field.

I hope there are fewer refs like him in the future.

That was about the dumbest call ever.

Anybody see the Florida player today pointing at somebody while running for a touchdown at the end of the game? He made an interception and was home-free. It appeared that he was pointing at the sideline for the last 10-15 yards or more. THAT should have drawn a flag..

quote:

Originally posted by Bulldog 19:
Anybody see the Florida player today pointing at somebody while running for a touchdown at the end of the game? He made an interception and was home-free. It appeared that he was pointing at the sideline for the last 10-15 yards or more. THAT should have drawn a flag..

Did you see the white hat trailing behind saying something that looked like "NO, NO, NO"?

The rule is the rule so I can't blame a ref for calling it. Remember a few years ago some team lost a game because of a flag like this. Best thing to do is get rid of the rule. Let them celebrate as long as it doesn't get pointed at the other team or it's fans. Or have the players get smart enough to hand the ball to the official do some high fives and head to the bench. Then once behind the bench bring back the Ickey Shuffle, Gastineau Ax Chop or the Oilers who had that huge choreographed dance. It will still be shown on TV and the fans will still see it but it won't be on the field.