Offsides?

[Jay Wisnieski]

I understand calling offsides when too many players are on one half of the field, or calling too many players on the field...those are easy calls. What I don't understand is calling offsides when the proper number of players are playing defense, and only two attackmen are on the offensive half instead of three. Isn't that team already penalizing itself by not having enough players on the field? In football, a team doesn't get penalized for only having ten players on the field instead of eleven. I'm sure there is a rule about this, and I'm sure someone will quote said rule, but I just don't get why a flag must be thrown in this instance.

[laxfan25]

Teams
Number, Designation of Players
SECTION 1. Ten players shall constitute a full team. If, because of injuries or team members disqualified by expulsion fouls, a team cannot keep 10 players in the game, that team may continue the game with fewer than 10 players, with on-side and stalling rules remaining in effect.

RULE 4-10/PLAY OF THE GAME
Offside
When Offside
SECTION 10. A team is considered offside when:
a. It has fewer than three men in its attack half of the field (between the
center line and the end line).
b. It has fewer than four men in its defensive half of the field (between the
center line and end line).
Note: If a player, seeing that he is going to be offside before he can stop, instead runs out of bounds, no penalty shall result from the failure of that player’s team to have the required number of men in either end of the field, as long as the player returns immediately to the field.

When Not Offside
SECTION 11. A team is not considered to be offside when three or more
players of the same team are in the penalty area. That team is required to
have three players in the attack half of the field and the remainder of its
players in the defensive half of the field at all times. No penalty shall result
from the failure of such a team to have the required number of players in
the defensive half of the field when this situation exists.

First of all, those are the rules as they exist in the '05 NCAA book. The question for you is, Why did Team A only have 2 men on the offensive side? Did one player run out ouf bounds? If so, and they immediately return to the correct side, no problem. Was a substitution taking place on the fly? If the replacement, due to innocent confusion, didn't promptly come on to the field there is typically not going to be a flag. However, if the ref felt that he was purposefully delaying his return to the field, you would have an illegal procedure for illegal substitution, or even potentially a releaseable USC. (Let's say the coach was hiding the guy in the box and when your D gets possession he would break onto the field in order to try to set up a Snidely Whiplash fast break. No-no).
If you have a man or men in the penalty box, the shortage of players has to be on the defensive half for obvious reasons.

So in answer to your question, no, a team is not really penalizing themselves if they are undermanned on attack, they have too many on the defensive half then. As to why the flag would be thrown, kind of like Everest, because the rules are there. I get the feeling though that in your case the team might have been short an attackman out of ignorance, which is usually evident by the sidelines going crazy trying to get somone out there. If that is the case I'd usually hold the flag becaue they are disadvantaging themselves by not having the ALLOWED number of players out there without malicious intent. In this case, ignorance IS an excuse!

[LaxRef]

A few things here:

One, section 4-11 was deleted via a COC bulletin this year. I've been after them to delete it for years, since the NCAA has stacking penalties and it's not possible to have more than 3 guys out on penalties since they passed the stacking rule many years ago.

There's a key A.R. here:

A.R. 108. During a special substitution, A1 delays his entrance onto the field. The trailing official sees the delay. RULING: Play-on unless A1 is involved, technical foul. This does not remove the responsibility of a team to adhere to the offsides rule.

Now, what's the point of the last snetence in thiis A.R.? I believe it's to protect the officials. Consider this: The trail official gets to midfield, stops, and looks back. He can only find 2 attack players back. He looks and looks again. Only 2 guys. He throws the flag for offsides, and then the coach from that team starts yelling "But we're intentionally delaying our sub, so we're not offsides! We can't be offsides because we're playing man down intentionally!"

This rule keeps the official from having to eat a flag. If you're dumb enough not to be able to take one guy off the field and then put one guy on the field when you're doing on-the-fly subs, you're liable to get a delayed sub or an offsides flag. And even if the delayed sub doesn't get involved in the play right away, if he tricks the official into throwing an offsides flag, you're guilty of offsides. I think that's fair.

We talked about this on another forum, and we agreed that if the official knows that the reason you're "offsides" is the delayed sub, he should probably hold off on the flag and just wait to see if the delayed sub warrants a flag. But if you "fool" the official into throwing the flag, that A.R. makes it clear that your team is technically offsides.