re: Louisiana Highschool State Championship game early celebration penalty.

quote:

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The request was not granted.

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If you go back and watch the play closely, with a focus on the top line judge, the clock, and the player that took his helmet off, you can see your statement just isn’t accurate. The official rules state that a timeout is granted when the referee signals to stop the clock and can’t be reversed once granted (unless there was some other thing stopping the clock prior to the granted timeout such as a penalty on a live play or a dead ball penalty immediately following the play such as a late hit…there wasn’t in this case and I’ll explain why). While we can’t see his arms, the line judge immediately begins running towards the head referee (and seems to be blowing his whistle from the audio) and should be waving his arms above his head granting the timeout. If he was not granting the timeout, he should have stayed near the sideline and only walked forward a few steps before going back into position for the next play. It’s clear he acknowledged and granted the timeout by running off the sidelines (and eventually even does the timeout signal as you see his feet turn the direction he would have turned to do the timeout signal, however it’s “granted” at the waving of hands to stop the clock).

The referee grants the timeout at 35 seconds on the clock, which is hilarious because that’s how much time was on the clock prior to the play. The clock operator didn’t start the clock on the snap as it should have. If you pay close attention, the player doesn’t even take his helmet off until the clock hits 33 seconds, a full 2 seconds after the ref had granted the timeout (or you can count the sideline judges steps and the helmet came off about 3-4 sideline judge steps later). This means he took his helmet off during a timeout because the timeout was clearly “granted” prior to the helmet coming off. I’m pretty sure the helmet coming off shouldn’t have been a penalty since it happened during a timeout.

The question becomes if the throwing the helmet during a timeout is a penalty, and that’s a judgment call. Lots of players throw stuff out of anger on their sidelines without penalties, however this was on the field during a timeout (somewhat away from other players, but still on the field). It probably should have been called, however the refs were more wrong to call it and give the timeout back than if they had just made a judgement call that since it was during a timeout, they weren’t going to call it. One is a judgement call, the other isn’t and isn’t open for interpretation.