A common officiating joke:
Coach (to official): Can I get in trouble for thinking?
Official: No, I can't do anything about your thoughts.
Coach: Then I think you suck.
When it's third and ten, you can take the milk drinkers and I'll take the whiskey drinkers every time. -Max McGee
“I really thought you had to run the football to control the game,” Erhardt once said. “You had to throw the football to score but had to run the football to win.” - Ron Erhardt
"You're either green and growing or ripe and dying." - Craig Bohl
It would be very subliminal if it works, especially the higher level you get. I'm sure youth or sub-varsity coaches with little experience or skill can be manipulated because they don't know the rules as well. There are things a coach can do to help draw attention to things that could be given more focus. For example, I'm horrible at keeping my eyes up to watch for hands to the face. If a player mentions his opponent is going up there, I'm going to pay more attention to it at least for the next few plays.
The coaches that complain constantly get tuned out, and I have to think this could affect them getting the benefit of the doubt on close plays. A common thing you hear is defensive coaches screaming for holding. Sometimes they do see something they perceive as holding but it's not. Sometimes I think they do it out of habit. We had a coach last year complaining about holding at the snap. Nobody has even initiated a block yet!
I don't hear much about this other than it's legal when done. You very rarely see it actually happen, and we have plenty of long hair at the D3 level. It could be just as dangerous as the horse collar.
I wish they would come up with a rule to limit the number of rule changes. My proposal, rule changes are limited to 3 and can only occur on leap years. Also, rule changes that further pussify the sport of football are only allowed at the turn of the century (i.e. in the year 2000, 2100, etc.). Enough damage to the sport has been done since 2000. Leave the game alone for a while.......Please!
Faking a slide should be a 15-yard penalty.
Happy to see the double freakout Pelini rule established.
Disappointed the "I'm hearing whistles" Farley rule was not addressed.
It is. It's called an inadvertent whistle and the officials enforced it correctly. If it's not heard by the official then it didn't happen. If that official didn't hear anything but reported he did, he will be dealt with by his supervisors. That's an integrity issue and will not be tolerated. We won't hear about it though.