A little NISOA action for you folks. Did anyone catch the Michigan vs Michigan State match this past weekend? In the 32nd minute (or more appropriately for college, with 13 minutes left in the first half), there was an ejection (send-off) for DOGSO. Michigan State keeper takes a free kick from just above their PA, a teammate flicks it on and the Michigan State Forward runs onto it passing by the last defender. As he attempts to control the ball, the defender pulls him down. Here's the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky9zTe5wNaw To me this was a reasonable call. Very close, but I believe the 4 D's are met (speaking in USSF terms even though I realize this is college ball). The commentators didn't like the call but I felt the referee had a very call to sell here. Thoughts?
Re: MU vs MSU - DOGSO?? Julian Robles got sent off for pretty much the same thing against Indiana. He's not quite ready for MLS.
Re: MU vs MSU - DOGSO?? I think if you make the decision that the contact that occurred was worthy of a foul and the subsequant penalty kick, then yes a send-off is neccesary as the four D's would be met. Is the foul pretty soft for a D1 college game and did the player embellish a little bit? I personally think so.
Re: MU vs MSU - DOGSO?? If you can tweak the title, you'd want to change to "UM" not "MU" ...it's The University of Michigan, not Michigan University. Looks like a foul, maybe the attacker embellished a little bit with the severity of his fall but still a foul. And if it's a foul, it's gotta be a red card on this one.
Re: MU vs MSU - DOGSO?? Yeah I was planning to mention that as well. Those Wisconsiners....they should know their Big 10 teams. Of course nothing is more annoying then OSUers saying they go to THE Ohio State University.
Re: MU vs MSU - DOGSO?? That is not their fault. OSU insists on being called The Ohio State University. That is the school's official name. So it's TOSU, not OSU. That doesn't mean I'm going to ever refer to it as The Ohio State University again.
Re: MU vs MSU - DOGSO?? Well said! I agree completely. If the ref judges a foul has been committed, then this has to be DOGSO.
Re: MU vs MSU - DOGSO?? Agreed - the announcer doesn't have a clue. My other question - Why isn't the coach or captain trying to control that Robles? He starts to leave (as he should) and then turns around to argue more. He then takes of his jersey and throws it. He should get an additional game suspension for this conduct. IMO, you need to control the behavior of college players strictly.
Re: MU vs MSU - DOGSO?? Actually, the closer one comes to Minnesota---which calls itself U of M as well---the likelier one is to see Michigan called "MU" rather than "UM." Of course, in my college days, we saw "MU" in Columbus as well, during our annual blood feud with Ohio State (I presume it was with THE Ohio State University, not the imposter college that apparently gads about the country trying to sew confusion, and requiring our friends in Columbus to be so meticulous). But I always thought they were just trying to taunt us: in Ann Arbor, the name for Michigan State was "Moo U," since they started out as an agricultural school (a "Cow College" in Ann Arborspeak...though quite frankly, the girls I saw there were always a LOT prettier that the ones in Ann Arbor, but the MSU people---including my brother---always seemed too frustrated by their lack of success at football to notice), so "MU" always struck me as a veiled insult. But...turning to more mundane topics: looking at the clip in real time, it seems like an obvious foul and send off. In slow motion, it almost looks as if the attacker flopped: he wrestled his way past the defender, put his right arm back (hooking the defender's), and fell backwards as the defender appeared to try to take his own arm away. Of course, slow-motion replays often obscure the force of the contact...and the body motions of the players in real time is more consistent with a deliberate hold and drag-down; in addition, the attacker had a really good chance to close on the keeper, and would probably have been intent on getting to the ball as quickly as possible, rather than calculating the odds of a successful dive. I think this illustrates the pitfalls of using slo-mo to second-guess or analyze a referee's call.
Re: MU vs MSU - DOGSO?? I wouldn't be surprised if the NCAA has cribbed from the professional game for this -- the parts of the NCAA rulebook I have looked at (handling and offsides) seem to me to be pretty much identical to the LOTG.
Re: MU vs MSU - DOGSO?? Those of us down here in the Big 12 have to make a note to differentiate between OSU (Oklahoma State University) and tOSU (The Ohio State University). I bet Pac-10 fans face a similar problem.
Re: MU vs MSU - DOGSO?? Well...I'm still wondering how the Big Ten would up with eleven schools (with the addition of Penn State a frew years back). The only explanation I can think of is that too many athletic directors avoided taking math in college. Either that, or the one who was supposed to keep track of such things forgot to include himself.
In college it is a little different... Did the defender, deny an obvious goal scoring opportunity to an opponent moving towards the defender's goal by a foul resulting in a free kick? (That is how it is exactly worded in the NCAA rule book.) The toughest part is the deny of the obvious goal scoring opportunity. If you stop the video at :32, the attacker has already passed the defender with the ball, thereby making it an obvious goal scoring opportunity. The defender has his arm on the attacker and has him either hooked or is holding him in some manner as to at least slow him down. Rule 12.4 prohibits a player from holding and or pushing an opponent, punishable by a free kick. In my opinion, under the NCAA rules all conditions have been met for the proper ejection.
For the NCAA - if the referee is of the opinion that a foul has been committed by the defender, then he's got to go. Good decision here. We can all nitpick whether or not we think this is a foul, but the referee was of the opinion that it was a foul so the ejection becomes accademic.
Re: MU vs MSU - DOGSO?? Have you ever noticed that there's an "11" hiding in the negative area of the Big Ten logo?