BYU Gets Hit, but is the NCAA Football Rule of "Unfair Tactics" Fair?

Today the Air Force Falcons took on the BYU Cougars in Provo, Utah, making it a great, rivalry-filled day for Mountain West Conference fans. You can read Patrick Kinahan's more detailed recap of what happened, but BYU won and won big--ruling most of the game and leaving little chance for Air Force to come back.

Because of BYU's dominance, the fact that the team received a random penalty of "deceiving the defense" in the third quarter is likely to go down without a fight. Kinahan reports that the crowd at LaVell Edwards Stadium did vociferously boo, but they were apparently placated by the end of the night.

Watching it at home on television, you could tell the CBS announcers were also baffled by the call. (Then again, I think they were in the midst of saying how noble BYU athletes are when Max Hall got a personal foul for unsportsmanlike conduct. And, they also uttered that if the Cougars hadn't had so many losses they may be ranked higher. I understand that's a true statement; it just also seems like something I'd say--not a professional analyst being paid well for his commentary. But I digress . . . .)

By and large, many of us don't understand the idea of a penalty that opposes "deceiving the defense." At first look, isn't this the point of football? You have trick plays, fake handoffs, and on and on, to purposely deceive the defense. But, sure, there are obviously unsportsmanlike moves that need to be regulated against in order to maintain the integrity of the game--like letting BYU schedule it while reporting to Air Force the wrong kickoff time.

Is this now-infamous play really illegal, though, according to NCAA football regulations? CBS fact-checkers later displayed NCAA rules on unfair tactics citing something about using a pretend substitution to deceive the defense is wrong. (I don't know: I didn't pay that much attention, and the Official NCAA Football 2009-2010 Rules and Interpretations guide book is a 272-page document which I hesitate to load on my darling but exhausted computer.) Suffice it to say, maybe the NCAA rule is a good one. But, without knowing exactly what Max Hall uttered on the field, we can't know that the rule did or didn't apply. If I were a referee, I'd probably like those kinds of calls.

Sources:

"Air Force vs. Brigham Young University Football Game on CBS," 21 November 2009.

Kinahan, Patrick. "BYU Postgame Blog." KJZZ.com.

"Official NCAA Football 2009-2010 Rules and Interpretations." NCAAPublications.com.