Fouls that "Didn't Affect the Outcome of the Match"

[Siri]

Originally Posted by GaryVoshol

Most refs can decide if something was a foul or not. But what about that sliding scale - was it a foul or a tech foul? - for those many infractions we had this year where both penalties were possible. Would you rather the ref entered the tech foul and it was downgraded after talking to the head ref, or enter the foul and it was upgraded later?

For myself: as a coach, I always want as much as much potentially relevant information available to me as possible (when/whether I process it and what I do with it will depend on my in-situ resolution of "potential"). As a ref, I don't like pretending to be sure of something I'm not. As such, my perfect world is: no call, possible foul, foul, possible T foul, T foul. I'm not sure yet whether I could handle this as a ref without slipping in other areas, but in terms of "would you rather", it'd be that. Maybe I'll try at some off-seasons. As far as entering, I don't care as long as it's standardized (i.e. always the higher option or always the lower option).

Originally Posted by BrendanM

I wholeheartedly agree with everything said on this thread. At the same time I would also like to point out how incredibly difficult it would be to count fouls as they occur in a match. As others have said; the refs had a huge amount of work to do for the 2014 games. There were rules that called for subjective decisions and others that needed a lot of situational attention. If there was even more to give the refs their penalty accuracy would drop tremendously. For example: at one of the competitions my team went to, there was a last second 40 point shot that changed the outcome of the game. Great, whatever. But they forgot to count it. It took about 45 minutes just for the refs to agree on weather or not it actually happened. Point is, there's only so much detail that can go into score counting as the game is being played.

I'm not sure what you mean by "count fouls as they occur in a match". We do our best to call and enter [change score to reflect] fouls in-match, but the software is doing any counting. Please elaborate?

Welcome to CD!

Originally Posted by dmaciel10123

...Not to mention that simply being disabled for a period of time is not equivalent to boosting the score to that of what it may be had the foul not occurred.

Not a big sports fan: is this actually the aim of fouls in other sports? I can't think of a sport that gives free points as fouls, it seems like it's always some kind of extra opportunity. I'm thinking about like yardage in football, free throws in basketball, penalty shots/kicks in hockey and soccer, though I don't know the nuances of any of them.