Pushing RB’s into the endzone
(Written by kencraw)
It seems that the topic of pushing other players forward seems to be getting more attention with every passing year. Starting with the “Bush Push” in 2005, each year more and more controversies errupt about whether some play was legal or not.
Everyone agrees that the rulebook is pretty strick about disallowing any type of pushing on the player. The debate always swirls around the “current interpretation” of the rule and whether this play or that violated the standarding being used today.
What many forget is it is NOT illegal to push a would-be tackler off the runner. So, not only do we have the vagarities of the “current interpretation”, we also have the subjective issues of whether the fellow offensive player is pushing the runner or pushing the tackler. Sometimes it is clear. Other times, particularly in a scrum, it’s not so clear.
All of this is background for the ASU’s 2nd touchdown on Saturday. The fans around me, I sit in the portion of the stadium closest to that particular play, were all up in arms about the pushing. I scoffed at it because I generally take a narrow interpretation of the rule and didn’t see anything unusual there.
That is until I got home and watched it on Tivo… HOLY SMOKES!
I’ve never seen a more blatant example of pushing that this. Herring’s feet were LIFTED OFF THE GROUND for the last two yards of the touchdown run. There were two ASU offensive line guys who literally picked him up and effectively used Herring as a battering ram to get into the endzone. If you’ve got a copy of the game, watch that section again. It was MUCH more blatant tha it seemed from the stands.
That should have been called. If there’s ever a time the pushing rule should be called, that was it.
October 6th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
The leaping penalty called just before was also a bad call, in my opinion.
October 6th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Ken, you obviously haven’t heard about it. Keegan Herring has inherited the ability to levitate for short instances. Obviously it does him no good in the open field, but near the goalline he can just and plunge it by having defenders miss his center of mass.
October 7th, 2008 at 7:55 am
Stephen, I completely agree. In fact I was going to post about it in the next day or two.
Necessity, oh… I didn’t know that. It’s pretty impressive that ASU was able to hide that talent by making it LOOK like the other guys were lifting him. Now that’s teamwork! 🙂
October 7th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
I posted most of this on BearTalk the other day. I also went home and watched the recording and was amazed at both the call and non-call.
I downloaded a pdf of the College Football Rules and Interpretations from ncaapublications.com (just google it to get the complete address) and here are the rules.
You make the call.
Rule 9-1-2 n:
No defensive player, in an attempt to gain an advantage, may step, jump
or stand on an opponent. No defensive player who runs forward from
beyond the neutral zone and leaps from beyond the neutral zone in an
obvious attempt to block a field goal or try may land on any player(s).
It is not a foul if the leaping player was aligned in a stationary position
within one yard of the line of scrimmage when the ball was snapped.
Rule 9-3-2 a
The runner shall not grasp a teammate; and no other player of his
team shall grasp, push, lift or charge into him to assist him in forward
progress.