It’s pretty common for a baseball manager to get kicked out of the game for arguing with the umpire. Occasionally a basketball coach will get ejected (including automatic ejection for two technical fouls). Why is it so rare for a football coach to be ejected? I don’t think I’ve EVER seen it happen.
Teams get hit with a 15 yard penalty if a coach gets out of line. That has a direct impact on the game. I think a coach can be ejected but I too don’t think I’ve seen it happen.
When a baseball manager gets ejected there is no direct penalty to the team. Therefore, the manager isn’t so concerned about putting on a show.
A fellow first-year official had it happen twice this year in high school ball. Our instructors were shocked it happened once.
A few reasons why it’s rare:
One unsportsmanlike conduct penalty is 15 yards and a first down if against the defense. That’s a big enough penalty that coahces try to avoid it.
It’s fairly easy for a ref to ignore and avoid a coach. Coaches are NOT allowed on the field to argue a call. There is no baseball-style arguments, and it’s not like basketball where the court is really tiny.
Football refs are more willing to give warnings before throwing flags. This is a big one.
Woody Hayes was famously ejected and fired for attacking a player of the opposing team (as well as a ref) during a bowl game.
Heck, it’s pretty rare for a player to get ejected in a football game…it usually takes an extremely flagrant personal foul, or verbally abusing an official. I don’t think it happens in more than a handful of games in any given NFL season.
A lot of the managerial ejections in MLB seem to be theatrical in nature – the manager storms onto the field to argue a call (despite the fact that doing so absolutely never works), puts on a show, and gets the heave-ho. I’ve seen it argued that this is often for the benefit of his players, to show them that he’s on their side.
The theory is that when the manager protests, the umpire will work harder to get things right in the future, even if it’s extremely rare for an umpire to reverse a call. The manager doesn’t always get ejected, of course; often he will argue a bit and then go back into the dugout. The manager can argue as long as he doesn’t insult the umpire or touch him, though it’s always up to the umpire (Earl Weaver was kicked out of a game in the 1969 World Series because he called the umpire – Shag Crawford – “Shag.” Or so he said, and Crawford may have heard something else).
And while rare, it can be reversed. The Mets won game five of the 69 series in part because an umpire reversed a call. Cleon Jones claimed a ball hit his shoe, but the umpire said no. Gil Hodges came out of the dugout with the ball, which had shoe polish on it, and the umpire called it a hit by pitch (the same thing happened to Nippy Jones in the 1957 World Series).
And the thing is in baseball, is that the Umpires feel like it’s just part of the game. After Bobby Cox famously broke the all time ejections record (he retired with 156 ejections!), an umpire had this to say:
That’s an umpire praising Cox for being ejected a lot. Ejections of the manager are just a different animal in baseball than they are in any other sport