First drive

WinterBorn said:
As I understand it, the replay booth can overturn the ejection but not the penalty or something (they were explaining it as it happened)

Did the helmets make contact? Yes, they probably did. But that is absolutely not what the rule is about. If we eject a player every time helmets make contact, we need more players because we'll lose a defender every play.

Yes I worked in industrial safety. From that standpoint the best thing I could do is stop the game from being played.

I can look at this objectively. If a Bama player had targeted an A&M player I would WANT him ejected. But this was not even pass interference.
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Again, having worked in industrial safety you know as well as I do that this is irrelevent. The rule itself may be flawed and I would agree with you that it is. The intent of the rule should be to change behavior. It the geniuses in the NCAA rules committee thinks this can be done by ejecting the player for making head to head contact than so be it. I don't necessarily agree with that but if that's the rule than that's the rule. What I disagree with is for a replay official to overturn the rule or, as in the case, do something even more senseless by overturning the ejection but applying the 15 yard penalty. What the hell kind of message is that?

The correct thing to have done, if safety was the priority, would have been the let the ruling on the field stand.

To illustrate what I mean. Say some guy at work removed a lock or a tag cause he knew his co-worker was out to lunch and that he was the only one working on the machinery. Say you're the safety manager and you caught him violating lock out/tag out. The rule is clear and so is the punishment. It's an automatic pink slip. So you do your job and you fire the guy...but 5 minutes later management overturns your decisions and lets the guy return to work. You'd have a hissy fit cause you know that such an act by management undermines an extremely important safety rule and principle.

In fact I had such a scenario as a safety manager where one of our best maintenance men violated a "no second chance" safety rule (permitted confined space entery). I caught him and I called plant security, had him removed from the facility and notified him that his employment was terminated. He was a great guy too. One hell of mechanic. He was extremely valuable to us. So the Plant Manager overturned my decisions and notified the mechanic that he could return to work. I immediately called our VP for Production and tendered my resignation in the presence of the plant manager to express my outrage at his decision. The VP flipped his lid and literally ordered the Plant manager to fire the mechanic or tender his own resignation. HThe plant manager did the right thing. He fired the mechanic. The VP commended me for doing the right thing.

Well what the replay officials did was the same knuckle headed stunt as what that plant manager did.
 
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Mott the Hoople said:
Again, having worked in industrial safety you know as well as I do that this is irrelevent. The rule itself may be flawed and I would agree with you that it is. The intent of the rule should be to change behavior. It the geniuses in the NCAA rules committee thinks this can be done by ejecting the player for making head to head contact than so be it. I don't necessarily agree with that but if that's the rule than that's the rule. What I disagree with is for a replay official to overturn the rule or, as in the case, do something even more senseless by overturning the ejection but applying the 15 yard penalty. What the hell kind of message is that?

The correct thing to have done, if safety was the priority, would have been the let the ruling on the field stand.

To illustrate what I mean. Say some guy at work removed a lock or a tag cause he knew his co-worker was out to lunch and that he was the only one working on the machinery. Say you're the safety manager and you caught him violating lock out/tag out. The rule is clear and so is the punishment. It's an automatic pink slip. So you do your job and you fire the guy...but 5 minutes later management overturns your decisions and lets the guy return to work. You'd have a hissy fit cause you know that such an act by management undermines an extremely important safety rule and principle.

In fact I had such a scenario as a safety manager where one of our best maintenance men violated a "no second chance" safety rule (permitted confined space entery). I caught him and I called plant security, had him removed from the facility and notified him that his employment was terminated. He was a great guy too. One hell of mechanic. He was extremely valuable to us. So the Plant Manager overturned my decisions and notified the mechanic that he could return to work. I immediately called our VP for Production and tendered my resignation in the presence of the plant manager to express my outrage at his decision. The VP flipped his lid and literally ordered the Plant manager to fire the mechanic or tender his own resignation. HThe plant manager did the right thing. He fired the mechanic. The VP commended me for doing the right thing.

Well what the replay officials did was the same knuckle headed stunt as what that plant manager did.
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So your suggestion is to enforce the rule (15 yards and ejecting the player) even if the official on the field got it wrong and the defender did not target the other player's head??

So its not about whether anyone actually breaks the rule?
 
Mott the Hoople said:
Agreed but that's not my point. I think the rule should be 15 yards and loss of down and replay officials cannot turn reverse it. That would get their attention and change behavior. Again, besides the point. Permitting replay officials to over turn a safety rule is the height of stupidity.
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The replay official reversed it because it was clear that Dix was not guilty of targeting. How can you be against accurate calls?
 
WinterBorn said:
No idea. But the announcers were saying something about being able to over-rule the ejection but not the penalty yardage, or some such bullshit.
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Yes, the review booth can over turn an ejection. I like that rule and I agree with it. An ejection is a serious penalty and in this situation comes on a play that happens so fast it's not always possible for a referee to really know if a player led with his helmet or his shoulder.

Yeah, still weird about the penalty yardage sticking.
 
It's all about the refs saying, "We saw your helmet touch the other guys so were gonna penalize you so you'll be more careful next time. The booth can review if it was intentionally malicious warranting an ejection or not." Weird rule. Collinsworth commented when a guy got injured and was being checked out after making a tackle that he feared that the new rules in the Pros was going to cause the defensive players to come in with their heads at odd angles causing neck injuries to themselves ... which seemed to be what had happened on that play. Who knows. I do think they're trying to make it safer but it is a violent game.
 
WinterBorn said:
So your suggestion is to enforce the rule (15 yards and ejecting the player) even if the official on the field got it wrong and the defender did not target the other player's head??

So its not about whether anyone actually breaks the rule?
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No. I'm saying you don't allow the replay booth to undermine an important safety rule. I'm saying that head to head contact did occur and that safety is far more important than any possible outcome of a game. If there was no foul....then there was no foul. I have no problem with the replay booth saying no foul occurred but that is not what they did. The replay both essentially ruled that the foul occurred but they wouldn't eject the player as is stated specifically in the rules. That was unconscionable.
 
WinterBorn said:
The replay official reversed it because it was clear that Dix was not guilty of targeting. How can you be against accurate calls?
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Because it's irrelevant in the larger picture of safety. You're thinking as a fan and not a safety professional. Accurate calls are completely unimportant compared to safety.
 
WinterBorn said:
No idea. But the announcers were saying something about being able to over-rule the ejection but not the penalty yardage, or some such bullshit.
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That's right! That's my major bitch. To permit the replay officials to do that is just freaken unconscionable. It violates one of the most important rules of safety management. Consistent enforcement. They demonstrated that they cared far more for competitive balance than for safety. If no foul occurred, then fine, no foul occurred but to say "Well we think a foul occurred but were going to let the guy play anyways" was purely inexcusable. The replay officials had no business overturning that rule like that. It showed that without a doubt that safety is not their primary consideration.
 
cawacko said:
Yes, the review booth can over turn an ejection. I like that rule and I agree with it. An ejection is a serious penalty and in this situation comes on a play that happens so fast it's not always possible for a referee to really know if a player led with his helmet or his shoulder.

Yeah, still weird about the penalty yardage sticking.
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But that's not how safety management works Wacko. The truth is, you have it ass backwards. If the rule clearly states that the player is to be ejected and you are using that as incentive to change behavior to improve safety than allowing management to arbitrarily change the rule due to "mitigating circumstances" only serves to undermine that intent.

I mean the fact that ya'll are going....."yea, weird about the penalty yard sticking" tell me you don't understand how safety management works.

When you are managing safety the impact those rules may have on the outcome of the game, how much is produced today, how quickly a machine gets fixed, how fast you complete a project, etc, etc, means exactly bupkus. Safety comes first and all that crap is not nor should even be a consideration.

Safety comes first in safety management and if you don't have buy in from management then safety rules won't be consistently enforced, behavior doesn't change and you end up accomplishing nothing.
 
leaningright said:
It's all about the refs saying, "We saw your helmet touch the other guys so were gonna penalize you so you'll be more careful next time. The booth can review if it was intentionally malicious warranting an ejection or not." Weird rule. Collinsworth commented when a guy got injured and was being checked out after making a tackle that he feared that the new rules in the Pros was going to cause the defensive players to come in with their heads at odd angles causing neck injuries to themselves ... which seemed to be what had happened on that play. Who knows. I do think they're trying to make it safer but it is a violent game.
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I agree. The rule probably should have said. "Regardless of the circumstances if there is head to head contact the individual initiating the contact will be ejected from the game".

I don't argue that the rule wasn't exactly well thought out. My bitch is that the NCAA affectively undermined their own damned safety rule. That's just plain stupid.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
That's right! That's my major bitch. To permit the replay officials to do that is just freaken unconscionable. It violates one of the most important rules of safety management. Consistent enforcement. They demonstrated that they cared far more for competitive balance than for safety. If no foul occurred, then fine, no foul occurred but to say "Well we think a foul occurred but were going to let the guy play anyways" was purely inexcusable. The replay officials had no business overturning that rule like that. It showed that without a doubt that safety is not their primary consideration.
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This is from an article on Bleacher Report: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/...g-rule-beating-clemson-and-my-favorite-player

"Ah, the new rules. Most importantly, the rule on targeting and how, if you are flagged for targeting you will be ejected and if they overturn your ejection via a booth review, then you can stay in, but the penalty for the reversed call still stands.

You following me? No. Yeah, that is because it sort of does not make sense."
 
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