Is it necessary to call so many penalties in football? And who would notice if they didn’t? (Press Pros Feature Photos)
Another reminder from Sunday’s Bengals’ game that the NFL is over-officiated with too many flags that do nothing but make you change channels.
I rarely watch NFL football because of the hypocrisy of it. It’s hard to read “Choose Love” painted under the goal posts and believe they mean it while Dolphins’ receiver Grant DuBose was nearly decapitated Sunday from hit received from Texans defensive back Calen Bullock…the second time an incident like that has happened this season involving a Houston defensive player.
But for some reason I got enamored with the Joe Burrow clinic Sunday against the Titans and watched it as long as I could…right up until the time the two broadcasters announced that there had been 25 penalties called, the most in an NFL game since 1976.
Every kind of infraction you can think of, the Bengals and the Titans made it happen – off side, illegal procedure, illegal formations, holding (of course), and twelve men on the field. It made it hard to watch.
Even with some background in officiating, I’ve always believed there were more football penalties than were necessary. After all, most of the officials I know personally claim that you can call holding on every play if you wanted to…and they play through it without incident.
And who would know if you didn’t call holding? 99% of those who watch are following the ball carrier and never see what’s going on behind the play. A retired official from this area used to say, “It has to look like steer wrestling for me to call holding.”
There are a lot of rules!
You can’t have two men go in motion on offense at the same time in the American game, while at the same time in the Canadian league you can literally get a head start running downfield from behind the line of scrimmage without being penalized. The Canadians say it makes for more action and a more exciting game.
You can’t cover up the tight end on the offensive line with another receiver lined up beside him, and after a hundred years of football few people, still, understand why. But the idea is you can’t have two eligible receivers side by side. But you can have a slot receiver two yards behind an eligible receiver – behind, but not beside.
I’ve never understood why it’s mandatory to have seven men on the line of scrimmage. If you want to play with fewer it’s your life you’re risking. But the reason for the rule is to not create an unfair advantage for either offense or defense. The irony is, they make the illegal formation call while they miss pass interference and defensive holding. In fact, a lot of things get missed in football because there’s probably too many rules.
I’ve asked officials about this before, but many of them are staunch company men. They’re not going about to blow the whistle on themselves.
For instance, I can’t see throwing a flag on an offensive lineman who flinches (illegal procedure) if he doesn’t draw a defensive player into contact.
Or in high school, why flag a defensive player for encroachment if he gets back onside before the ball is snapped? But they do.
There are some officials who’ve told me they’re not stopping the game for a holding call if it’s on the opposite side of the field and forty yards away from the play, especially in high school. Makes sense.
Or this. Some used to say that high school kids don’t know the rules, so why penalize them what they don’t know.
“It’s not my job to teach football,” official Doc Staley liked to say. “I get paid to officiate, and not very much, at that.”
Actually, I’m for making any game easier through administration – quicker, and more interesting to watch – regardless of the sport. Having umpired baseball for several years at a pretty high level, a lot of us back then found that the more liberal your strike zone the better the game. Today, the strike zone is about the size of a postage stamp and what you get is a lot of walks, slow play, and something that’s terrible to watch.
Publisher Sonny Fulks writes OHSAA sports and the Buckeyes for Press Pros Magazine.
No one wants to see fights and poor sportsmanship anymore, and the responsibility for law enforcement gets dumped on the officials, as well.
When I played college baseball back in the 70s we had fights, and every player understood that if you crossed the line – tried to hurt someone or threw at a hitter on the other team – retribution was swift and sure. But then that was the end of it. The game policed itself. If you know baseball coach Frosty Brown, ask him to tell you about the fight that happened in the Wilson Freight/Troy Legion baseball game one night in Troy back in the 70s. He loves to tell that story.
But back to football, I called a couple of officials yesterday and left messages, wanting to know if they believed that the game had become over-officiated. None of them called me back.
I’m assuming that they either were upholding the company line, or doing laundry. One of the two.
Probably folding that yellow flag!
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