Monday, October 5, 2009

What to do about the celebration rule?

As I am sure everyone has already heard the SEC has officially come out and stated that they made a mistake and A.J. Green should not have been flagged after his touchdown catch against LSU. I appreciate the apology but that does not change that fact that this single call might have cost Georgia the game. I have watched the replay a dozen times and do not see anything close to what the officials stated they saw. Supposedly A.J. Green was penalized because he gestured toward the crowd. How could he have made a gesture toward the crowd he was getting hugged from all his teammates and could not even raise his arms. This is not the first time that the new celebration rule has cost a team a win. Washington was robbed of win last year against BYU for the same call.

I see there are two things that need to be done:

1. They NCAA needs to change this rule and adopt the NFL rule. This is what I think should be done. Pretty much, the NFL states that players can not use props when celebrating a touchdown. They are allowed to make "gestures towards the fans", they can jump in to the stand like in Green Bay and they can dance all they want. Only thing as I stated earlier is that they can not use props.

2. The review booth needs to be able to review calls made by the officials. Coaches are allowed to challenge certain calls that the officials make, so why can coaches not challenge when a referee throws a flag. I understand that officials are only human and mistakes will be made. I do not think though that these mistakes should be able to change the outcome a game.

I am pretty certain that both of these will not happen but the NCAA seriously needs to do something about this rule. If the outcome of two games have already been changed due to this rule why would you not change it. Also if you are not going to change the rule then officials need to be fined for making bad calls. 

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