The Soup Nazi has taken up a new profession apparently, now in the personal foul definition business. While all of us were aghast that Allen was called for a personal foul, it has since come out that one of the official interpretations of the endzone celebration rule in college is that touching anyone in the stands is a personal foul.

Since that’s the case, I officially apologize to the refs for being harsh to them about it. It’s not their job to question or overlook rules or interpretations. It’s their job to enforce them accurately and consistently. It appears they did precisely that in this case.

It’s the Soup Nazi that ticks me off.

Why would this be an official interpretation of the rule? I could see “leaving the playing field” or “entering the stands” being the rule, but giving some fans a high five… what in God’s name should be wrong with that? Is the goal here to make college football as sterile as possible? Who loses in this case? What’s the risk that something negative will happen as a result? No matter which way I look at it, I can’t see the value of this official interpretation of the rule.

Disappointing, very disappointing.

It was brought up in the comment box that Ludwig may be interested in exploring using the Wildcat formation with Best. For those not in the know, the Wildcat is a formation with a direct snap to the running back that is 4 times out of 5, maybe more, a running play.

Everytime I see the Bears line up that way I sigh.

First of all, the way the Bears have done it in the past is that they don’t “tip their hat” until after the huddle breaks. In other words, the QB is still a player in the huddle so that the opposition doesn’t know that a direct snap is coming. This sounds great in theory, why give the opposition any more warning than necessary, right?, but in the end I think it gives up the biggest advantage of the Wildcat: an extra blocker.

If you think about your average running play, the QB is a pretty wasteful player on the field. All he does is take the ball from the center, hand it to the running back and then get the heck out of everyone’s way. There have been a number of strategies to address this weakness. Most of them involve turning the QB into an additional running back (or at least a pseudo one). The original option did this. So does the zone-read option that spread teams like Oregon run.

The wildcat takes a different approach. It is designed to get the QB off the field and substitute in another blocker. Cal doesn’t gain this benefit because they leave the QB on the field, usually spread out as a wide receiver.

Which brings me to the the 2nd big problem. It is fundamental to the Wildcat. If you direct snap to the running back, the defense doesn’t have to much respect the passing game. This is of course a huge problem and over 50% of good offensive strategy is providing balance that keeps the defense guessing.

The solution to this problem is to find a running back who is a psuedo-QB. If the running back can throw the ball well enough that it keeps the defense honest, then you’ve got a win-win: an extra blocker on the field and at least the threat of offensive balance.

And Jahvid Best can’t throw worth a hill of beans. Seriously. There’s a reason that the one time the Bears ran the halfback pass, it was Vereen. There’s a reason that the other times Cal threw from a different position than QB it was a wide receiver. Jahvid. Can’t. Throw.

And everybody knows it.

So when Cal runs the direct snap, and splits the QB to a wide receiver position, it’s the worst of both worlds: the defense knows that Cal is going to run the ball, it doesn’t have to worry about covering the QB at wideout and Cal doesn’t have an extra blocker to make up for it.

That’s why the Wildcat didn’t work last year (and in part why it was somewhat successful with Marshawn Lynch, who can throw pretty well).