Drew Edwards ? @scratchingpost
#CFL fines #Argos GM Jim Barker $2.5K, bans him from sidelines for "attempting to communicate" with official on key play vs. #Ticats
[b]Drew Edwards, Scratching Post
- Count owner Bob Young among the growing legion of Ticat fans who are fed up with CFL referees – and it cost him $10,000 to say so.
Young took to the Ticats’ online forum on Wednesday morning – where he regularly interacts with fans – to criticize a key offside call in last Saturday’s loss to Toronto and that Argonaut general manager Jim Barker was standing directly behind the official who threw the flag.By Wednesday afternoon, the league responded by slapping Young with a $10,000 fine “public comments criticizing CFL officiating.? The league also fined Barker $2,500 for his actions and banned him from the sidelines for the remainder of the 2014 season, including playoffs.
At issue is a fourth quarter offside call against the Ticats which gave Toronto a second chance after Hamilton stopped them on third-and-short near the Ticat goal line.
“The biggest ‘controversy’ is not so much the call itself, but is the Toronto GM coaching the sideline judge during the play. The result was the official called a very marginal penalty,? Young wrote.
[url=http://scratchingpost.thespec.com/2014/10/ticats-owner-bob-young-fined-10k-for-criticizing-officials.html]http://scratchingpost.thespec.com/2014/ ... cials.html[/url]
“At the very least there should have been two penalties. The other for objectionable conduct to Toronto for their GM’s blatant and successful attempt to influence an official on the field.?[/b]
good. barker is banned from the sidelines for the remainder of the season.
maybe next year if he still has a job he'll have learned his less and stay within the bench boundary
and lets hope after this debacle the CFL actually enforces the rule regarding personnel on the sidelines
So, Bob Young gets fined for publicly saying what the league later says publicly. Huh.
good on Young for calling out the officiating crew for allowing an unbridled Barker to flaunt the sideline rules.
and I'm surprised that the discrepancy between the two fines is so great when Young just called it as it is, while Barker used coercion among the officials.
Good on Bob Young for calling it out like this, not his style, a double standard here.
An inch or two leeway is required for this, how parallel are the lines on a football field anyways especially those where the lines come off for other events like the RC? Needs to be discussed during the offseason by the CFL officiating committee.
No, that’s not what happened. Young went 2+2=5 and connected Barker’s action (details of which we know nothing about) to a “marginal call”. Big difference between that and confirming Barker’s shouldn’t have been standing that close to an official…which he and other team officials have done many times in the past.
Owners criticizing the refs is always met with a significant fine. The league is very consistent on that.
that is true, however the discrepancy in fines ($10K for Young and $2.5 for Barker) seems lopsided considering Barker’s flagrant sideline infraction.
And I assumed Cohon was a lame duck Commish :lol:
Way to go Mark :thup:
Good move by the CFL.
Surprising, but good move.
It shows you which of these things the league considers more troublesome. Barker has also been banned from the sidelines for the rest of the season, which isn’t monetary but sends a message. I found Barker’s punishment appropriate for the situation, and Youngs not surprising considering the usual league stance (although I’d have lowered it if I was in charge).
Toronto Argonauts general manager Jim Barker and Hamilton Tiger-Cats owner Bob Young were each fined by the CFL on Wednesday for their actions last week.
Barker was fined $2,500 for violating the league's sideline policy by positioning himself on the goal line directly behind an official, and attempting to communicate with that official during Saturday's game against the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.
He will also not be permitted on the sidelines during play for the remainder the regular season and playoffs.
"I made a mistake and I accept the fine and the subsequent sanction as determined by the CFL office," Barker said in a statement. "It was not my intention to be outside of the player box as per the CFL sideline policy. In fact, I was making my way to the designated area and I was waiting for the series end. My actions were in no way pre-meditated and I did not intend to communicate with the official."
Young has been fined $10,000 for his public comments criticizing CFL officiating after the Tiger-Cats loss to the Argonauts.
So, how many inches over the line is allowed? And on the other side of the ball, how close to the goal line does the football need to be to be called a touchdown?
There’s a line painted on the field for a reason. Players need to respect it.
If any part of the ball breaks the plane of the goal line, it’s a TD.
If the ball is in the middle of the field, the sideline officials are 30 yards away from the lineman…how accurate do you expect the human eyes to be with regard to those “inches over the line”?
Maybe if Dr. Evil was in stripes and brought his killer dolphins with their “frikken laser beams” we could determine, once and for all, the extent of all these offside calls that aren’t getting called.
If the ball happened to be right at the ground, and the official at the goal line had an unobstructed view of the ball along the line, then I would expect him to be pretty accurate in being able to call the touchdown or not. Which is exactly the scenario with Plesius’s hand.
Again, how many inches over the line is OK, and when should offside be called? Two? Three? Four? Five? And at that distance, how is the linesman to gauge whether it’s not too far over?
when are they going to start fining players for major penalties.
If your a coach on or a player standing on the sidelines, you want to be really careful how you treat the officials till season's end...
Well if there is absolutely no wiggle room for offside with the fingers lining up for exactly one yard, then be consistent league, if the ball is snapped and a receiver in motion is one iota over the line, call it offside. But they don't, the player can be even a yard over the line it seems on many plays and guess what, that's ok. :?
Maybe the league should go to the American system and line up right to the nose of the ball, at least there is some wiggle room as the centre often tips the ball up a bit and more up to the discretion of the officials. I'm starting to think that that would be the better system.
We are going to change OUR game because of one entitled Californian ?