USC football poll: Is Carroll committing a cardinal sin?
USC coach Pete Carroll and UCLA coach Rick Neuheisel had both favored their teams wearing home jerseys during discussions this season. Earlier Monday, Neuheisel said that he thought the matter was dropped because of NCAA rules.
Upon learning of Carroll’s decision to go ahead with it Monday night, Neuheisel said: “It’s exciting. I think wearing the home jerseys is a great tradition.”
UCLA and USC both wore their home jerseys in the rivalry game until 1982. Under current NCAA rule 1-4-3-a, teams must wear contrasting colors with the visiting team wearing white. Teams violating the rule lose a timeout in each half.
Pac-10 officials have made unsuccessful attempts in recent years to get the NCAA football rules committee to grant a waiver allowing conference schools to wear their home jerseys in rivalry games. However, Rogers Redding, the current secretary-editor of the NCAA football rules committee, recently told Pac-10 officials he thought there was some ambiguity in the rule and would reconsider the Pac-10 request, conference associate commissioner Jim Muldoon said.
“He said he’d take a look at it,” Muldoon said.
Pac-10 officials hope to have a decision from Redding, the SEC director of officials, on Tuesday.
During Carroll and Neuheisel’s initial discussions Neuheisel said he planned on wasting a first-half timeout to give each team the same number of timeouts. But Neuheisel balked at the idea when he learned that the rule called for the loss of a timeout in each half.
“In the second half for me, it’s too costly to be giving a timeout away,” Neuheisel said.
Related links:
It is NOT a penalty of one time out per half, it is one penalty of one timeout upon the first infraction, i.e. kickoff with no further penalty. Please get your facts right.
A lesser penalty
12-02-2008 1:08 p.m.
The Trojans will only be charged one timeout after the opening kickoff for violating the NCAA jersey rule ? instead of one per half ? during Saturday’s USC-UCLA game, Coach Carroll just learned.
Rogers Redding, the NCAA’s secretary-rules editor, e-mailed the Pac-10 institutions with a clarification of the rule this afternoon, writing that “if the visiting team does not wear white jerseys, the visiting team will be assessed one timeout following the opening kickoff of the game. The game will proceed from the point with no further penalty for the violation.”