College Football Analysts Are Wrong

About what, you ask? The excessive celebration penalty against Washington with 2 seconds to go against BYU on Saturday. Yes, it was excessive celebration. It violated the rule. In football, when a rule is violated, the flag comes out of the referee's belt. It doesn't matter if there is 59 minutes left in the game or 2 seconds left. The flag comes out.

The rule says something very similar to this: After a dead ball, the player should place the ball near the dead ball spot or hand the ball immediately to the official. It goes on to say that an excessive celebration penalty includes (and I am quoting the rule here), "(c) throwing the ball high in the air."

That is exactly what the Washington player did. He threw the ball high in the air. He did not flip it over his shoulder (cough, Mark May). It took a good 2-3 seconds for the ball to come back down. And the ball hit him in his shoulder.

I don't care if it tied up the game against a top 15 opponent. Rules are rules. If he didn't throw the ball in the air, there wouldn't have been a penalty. And, for Pac-10 officials to call it (and Pac-10 officials are homers in non-conference play, we all know), it must have been a penalty.