(Do not) Express yourself: NCAA bans taunting, eyeblack
By Matt Hinton
Rivals.Yahoo.com
Regular readers will recall that in February the NCAA rules committee recommended approving a new rule that would strip touchdowns for taunting penalties, along with a ban on personalized eyeblack messages — area-code shout-outs, Bible verses, etc. — that threaten innocent American consumers with genuine individual expression during their carefully crafted weekend broadcasts. Wednesday, the Playing Rules Oversight Panel (PROP) made both rules official (emphasis added):
The anti-taunting rule won't take effect until 2011, which gives us a full season to count the ways it will ruin the game then. I'm not an apologist for excessive celebration (though it certainly can be fun in retrospect), but the most persistent issue with the NCAA's increased enforcement of "sportsmanship" over the last few years is that officials are so bad at applying it. It's insulting enough that the "crackdown" on taunting has already led to the kind of lame, overbearing interpretations like this one against Washington's Jake Locker in 2008 and this one against Georgia's A.J. Green last October, both of which played major roles in their teams' respective defeats in those games even without negating the late touchdowns that triggered the celebrations. Any rule that increases the opportunity for any official to directly, subjectively affect the outcome by striking points from the board is destined for catastrophe.
Full story here:
http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/footba...AkftkL9PAgD1H71wbPNPjW85nYcB?urn=ncaaf,234533
By Matt Hinton
Rivals.Yahoo.com
Regular readers will recall that in February the NCAA rules committee recommended approving a new rule that would strip touchdowns for taunting penalties, along with a ban on personalized eyeblack messages — area-code shout-outs, Bible verses, etc. — that threaten innocent American consumers with genuine individual expression during their carefully crafted weekend broadcasts. Wednesday, the Playing Rules Oversight Panel (PROP) made both rules official (emphasis added):
The anti-taunting rule won't take effect until 2011, which gives us a full season to count the ways it will ruin the game then. I'm not an apologist for excessive celebration (though it certainly can be fun in retrospect), but the most persistent issue with the NCAA's increased enforcement of "sportsmanship" over the last few years is that officials are so bad at applying it. It's insulting enough that the "crackdown" on taunting has already led to the kind of lame, overbearing interpretations like this one against Washington's Jake Locker in 2008 and this one against Georgia's A.J. Green last October, both of which played major roles in their teams' respective defeats in those games even without negating the late touchdowns that triggered the celebrations. Any rule that increases the opportunity for any official to directly, subjectively affect the outcome by striking points from the board is destined for catastrophe.
Full story here:
http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/footba...AkftkL9PAgD1H71wbPNPjW85nYcB?urn=ncaaf,234533
