New Taunting Rule In Football Could Be Disastrous

I’m not going to lie, during basketball season (and immediately after,) much of my attention gets drawn away from college football.  Sure, I keep up with what’s going on with Kentucky’s team and recruiting class and how the draft is shaping up, but that’s about it.  That being said, what I miss out on tends to be minor rule changes.  Fortunately for all of us, Clay Travis exists.  When he’s not busy hating Tennessee’s new basketball coach more than he hates Calipari, he occasionally covers Tennessee football in a way we like to cover Kentucky basketball – slightly silly and entertaining to read.  So when he made mention of a new taunting rule potentially wreaking havoc throughout college football next season it made my ears perk up.

Here’s how it works.

If officials decide that a player was ‘taunting’ an opponent, it will now necessitate a penalty seperate from a celebration penalty.  The regular 15 yard penalty will apply, but the kicker is – break the taunting rule before you cross the goal line and your touch down gets wiped from the board. That’s right, for not doing anything outside the rules of the game – purely a discretion call from the refs – a touch down could be taken from your team.

So the guidelines for getting a taunting penalty must be very specific and extreme, right?  Wrong.  Actions that count as taunting – according to the official rule book – include placing a hand to the ear to incite the crowd, pounding your chest, tossing the ball away from an official, removing the helmet, altering your stride into the end zone, flipping into the endzone – as well wording that leaves the ruling ultimately up to the discretion of  the refs.  Not to mention that the penalty is enacted from the spot where the taunting began.

So alter your stride (includes high stepping,) heading into the end zone?  15 yard penalty from the yard you started on, touch down wiped clean.

Additionally, any player that receives two unsportsmanlike penalties is ejected from the game.

Or as Clay Travis writes it:

Come September, your team’s best player could break into the open field in a tie game late in the fourth quarter. Overcome with joy, he might high step the final ten yards while turning to look at the nearest defender, score the touchdown, race the length of the end zone and then throw the football into the stands in celebration.

You know what the correct call would be based on the new rules?

First, a taunting penalty would be thrown, that’s 15 yards from the spot of the foul. So, since the taunt began at the 10 yard line, move it back to the 25 yard line. Next, a celebration penalty should also occur, moving the ball back an additional 15 yards, so a touchdown is gone and your team now takes over at the 40!

Need more? The player would also be ejected from the game for receiving two unsportsmanlike conduct penalties, the taunting and the celebration.

Holy crap.

Holy crap indeed.

Clay got the chance to officiate part of the Alabama spring game and has included a write up about that new rule here. It’s a pretty entertaining and interesting read, even if Clay doesn’t know how to properly count to 8.