The LSU Penalty

If you're talking about the Florida-Arkansas game that sent the Gators to the BCS title game, I am in complete agreement.

 

I am pretty sure that if they want to be completely anal about it (which certainly fits in this whole discussion since the "celebration rule" is completely anal in the first place), a batter/baserunner is technically supposed to be OUT if he makes contact with another offensive player (or coach) on the field of play while a play is still in progress (and a play, of course, is in progress until a home-run batter touches the plate).

Bottom of the ninth. Two outs. Bases loaded. Mudville Mofos down 4-1. Mighty Casey blasts home run into upper deck. Runner 1 scores, runner 2 scores, runner 3 scores. Mighty Casey rounds third, third base coach Freddy Fatass slaps him on the rump. Mighty Casey is out, third out, no run scores, game over.

 

The rule in baseball doesn't say he's out for merely making contact, it's receiving assistance.

I hate the rules about taunting and celebrating.

 

The funny thing is, if you go back and watch some of the archive tapes of games from the 1960s/50s and before, when probably 3/4 (and more) of all Div. 1 major college players were good hardworking crewcut white boys, it was not at all uncommon in those days for guys to wind up and hurl the ball into the air, or into the stands, after scoring.

It was only in the 1960s and 1970s when black guys started doing touchdown dances that College Football Hierarchy started going into vapors about it.

 

If you let a punter run 50 yards for a touchdown, you *deserve* to be taunted.

 

The baseball dogpile isn't perfectly analogous. For the most part, the dogpile will happen once the winning run crosses home plate. In that regard, it's more like the A.J. Green and Charles Scott post-TD celebrations which, if they happened after a winning TD with no time on the clock, would have been within the rules (the game would be over).

What would be comparable would be if baseball had a taunting rule that took effect at the moment of the taunt, the way Wing's penalty was enforced. Let's say Chili Davis hits a home run and trots around the bases, as he was known to do, with the "flaps down." If this was SEC football, his trip around the bases would end as soon as he put the flaps down and he'd be penalized from that point (either by going back to the nearest base or being called out or whatever the rule would be...since the rule doesn't exist, take your pick)

 

Jahvid Best clearly pointed his finger toward the end zone while at the 25-yard line. It should be Lions' ball at the 40 now, not a touchdown.