By Greg Auman, Times Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
The Big East is in a unique position as a conference when it comes to officiating because the conference's Coordinator of Football Officials, Terry McAuley, has worked as an NFL official since 1998 and served as referee for Super Bowl XLIII in Tampa in 2009.
McAuley has been in attendance at the league's annual spring meetings, talking with the conference's head football coaches to help them understand key changes in officiating rules for the 2011 season. He was kind enough to explain a few in detail Tuesday afternoon.
— Major changes to the block-below-the-waist language. In the past, blocking below the waist has been addressed as something legal except in certain circumstances (against an opponent already engaged with another blocker, etc.) with more restrictions added over the years. As a safety precaution, that language is being rewritten as not being allowed except in a few situations, meaning players must be more careful when they block below the waist.
"Anything in the initial line play (is legal), a player leading the sweep going toward someone that sees it coming and can protect themselves," McAuley said as examples of allowable blocks below the waist. "The real problems we eliminated over the years were open-field ones on change of possessions and kicks, which are illegal, or the blind side, which is really the most crucial one, where you get the wide receiver and it's the low crack-back (block). The guy doesn't know he's coming, can't defend himself and loses a knee or an ACL or something like that. We have some more restrictions we'd like to get in."
McAuley said officials will continue to tweak the language of the rule to make it more easily understood by coaches and officials this season.
— Teams are now subject to a 10-second runoff when a foul is committed in the final minute of a half. The situation is best known from last year's Music City Bowl, when North Carolina was called for illegal substitution on what had looked to be the last play of the game, putting a second back on the clock that allowed for a tying field goal; UNC went on to beat Tennessee in overtime.
"Certain situations come up where a team gains an advantage by committing a foul. We can't let them do that," he said.
If a team commits a foul that stops the clock in the final minute, they're subject to a 10-second runoff -- the opposing team can decline it if they choose, and the offending team can exercise a time out to avoid the runoff. McAuley said he went over every Big East game last year (including Notre Dame games with Big East crews) and found five instances where the new rule would have applied.
In particular, he found that last year's Notre Dame-Michigan State -- which ended with a wild fake field goal for a Spartans win -- had two such instances in the final minute of the first half, where Michigan State was twice flagged for false starts in Notre Dame territory in the final minute, ultimately not scoring on the drive.
"It would have had a major impact, I think, on the game," he said. "When the second was done, there were 37 seconds on the clock. With two 10-second runoffs, that would have been 17. (Michigan State had time for three plays, all incomplete passes.) They might have had a little more trouble getting that done. They weren't doing it on purpose, but they did gain an advantage."
– More leniency will be given in intentional grounding situations -- passers are no longer required to throw a pass that an eligible receiver has a reasonable opportunity to catch. Now for their safety, a quarterback can throw in the area of an eligible receiver, whether that opportunity is there or not.
"Offensive coaches and head coaches are generally happy. Defenses aren't," McAuley said. "Now, we get to tell our coaches to tell the quarterback, if you're under pressure in the pocket and you need to legally get rid of the football, put it at a teammate, an eligible receiver's feet. Don't worry about what he's doing. What it fixes is the broken screen where the running back gets knocked down. The quarterback's got nothing to do with that. He can die back there or get the intentional grounding. We don't want either of those to happen. Give up the down -- the defense still gets the down, and the quarterback lives to tell about it."
McAulay said the challenge is identifying what qualifies as in the area of the receiver -- he said it's not intended as a specific halo, say, within 5 yards, but rather the intent. "If I'm throwing it toward a player and it lands 7 yards in front of him, that's probably OK," he said. "But if I'm throwing it away from a player and he's going that way, he's not throwing to anybody. He's dumping the football. We really want to stretch it as much as possible so the quarterbacks can legally dump the football, end the play, take the down and move on."