Refs will identify (by number) the player who commits and infraction in an NFL game. Why don’t college officials do the same?
I think the attitude within the NCAA is, “these are just kids, not professionals. There’s no need to humiliate a kid by calling out his number in front of the whole arena.”
Whether you buy that argument, of course, is a different matter.
It’s a moot point anyway. The announcers identify them every time.
I would think that at the very least, the coach would want to know, so he go over how not to facemask with #45 at the next practice.
High school and college referees do tell the coaches exactly who the penalty was on and go in to more detail about the infraction. They just don’t say it on the microphone.
The WAC announced player numbers with penalties for a few years, but it doesn’t anymore.
Hmmm, fascinating question. But I have a small hijack, if I may:
Does anyone track penalties on individual players? As in, “Joe Smith led the league in holding penalties last year. He got flagged XX times, costing his team a total of XX yards.”
I don’t think I’ve ever seen such statistics, but I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if they kept them. Shouldn’t be too hard either.
I wouldn’t be surprised if NFL teams keep track of them on their own. They go through so much game film and grade players so extensively that coaches know which players tend to draw penalties.
I think the league only keeps track of them for teams as a whole.
I’ve seen stats like that on MNF and other networks for the Pros. I’ve even heard stuff like “Kearse drew the most holding penalties last season” (last stat is made up to show a point). This means that some geek somewhere actually tracks which players generate the most calls against the other team, not just who the most calls are against. They’re probably baseball statisticians in the off-season. 