A football rules question

In basketball, gesturing as if to call a timeout when you have none left is a technical foul. One notable instance of this was in the 1993 NCAA men’s championship game, when Chris Webber of Michigan signaled for a timeout in the closing seconds of play - a timeout that Michigan did not have. The resulting technical foul essentially cost them the game.

Okay, I get what you’re saying. Obviously you’re going to get a penalty for doing something that’s against the rules. But I thought people were saying you’d get a penalty even if consecutive timeouts were allowed by the rules. The equivalent of scoring more touchdowns when you’ve already got a thirty point lead in the fourth quarter - there’s no rule against what you’re doing but you get a penalty just for being unsportsmanlike.

Ah, gotcha. Yeah, the confusion is that you thought I was using “unsportsmanlike conduct” to describe a behavior. I wasn’t; that just happens to be the name of the penalty.

No I understood that. I think the confusion was that you were describing what would happen under the actual rules and I was describing a hypothetical situation where the rule was different. And I can see where I wasn’t clear in my post about it being a hypothetical.

Don’t worry Nemo - you’re not the only one confused by that rule. In the Chargers/Raiders game earlier this season, Jason Campbell called a 2nd consecutive timeout in order to avoid a delay of game penalty. The referee ran in, told him he couldn’t call a 2nd timeout, reset the play clock to 25 and let the Raiders run the play.

It’s apparently not a penalty to attempt to call a 2nd timeout - the ref should simply ignore you. If the ref actually blows his whistle and stops the play, then he is supposed to restart the clock as soon as he realizes the error, unless he decides that the act was intentional and unsportsmanlike - and in that case a 15 yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty would be assessed. But in this particular case, the referee stopped the Raiders from getting a penalty for delay of game by telling Campbell he couldn’t call another timeout and then resetting the play clock to 25.

It didn’t actually make any difference - the Raiders went on to kick a field goal that certainly would have been good from 5 or even 15 yards farther out, but it was definitely a big screw up by the ref.

Even if it was allowed, I can’t think of too many situations where it would look like a good idea to call two consecutive timeouts. You described one. The one I mentioned above would be another. But they’re rare enough that it’s not surprising people are unfamiliar with the prohibition against it.