For those of us that have suffered through Bellotti sitting on the ball at the end of the half or end of the game…

He did take a position. He’s saying that in the Neuheisal case, it was running up the score but in Kelly’s case, it wasn’t. He even said that in the very post you responded to

In case I wasn’t clear, in the Neuheisel case, I believe it can be much more directly argued that his call was an attempt to run up the score and hence, classless. I don’t think there is that strong of an argument in Kelly’s case.

Paul Wulff is a joke and so is his team.

Couldn’t possibly disagree with this more. Bill Doba set back WSU 10 years and Paul Wulff is charged with picking up the pieces. They are, by no means “a joke”.

Our D didn’t deserve anything. Our team got the win and you move on. You challenge the call because the refs possibly got it wrong and it deserves further review. Not because some artificial feeling that our D deserves a shutout against the worst team in the Pac-10.

In competition, you don’t deserve anything. You reach out and compete for everything you have. You don’t get things handed to you just because. The D doesn’t get a shutout just because and WSU shouldn’t get a TD just because. The call was challenged, the TD was given and the call was confirmed to be right.

This was NOTHING like a fake punt.

They were both moves by the coach that were attempts to keep the score from closing, in situations where they were not necessary for victory.

I think the big thing is, this whole situation would have blown over had Wulff said nothing, just as Bellotti fed the fake punt fire.

I just think those reactions are dumb. It’s football. It’s competition. You go 100% the whole time. And though there is an obvious difference between challenging a call and a fake punt, there’s also a massive difference between a NEW YEARS DAY BOWL GAME, and a regular season game against one of the worst teams in D1-A.

I don’t know, has he said in the media that’s what he was doing?

In George Schroeder’s article it says this:

Oregon’s rookie head coach is brash, and occasionally impulsive. He goes for it on fourth down like a saner version of Mike Leach, and you’ve got to like the swashbuckling style.

Was the decision to challenge impetuous? Sure.

It was also correct — and I’m not talking about whether WSU scored.

"We challenged to get the right call on the field," Kelly said.

But given the situation, was a challenge the right call?

"Our guys are out there battling," Kelly said. "It’s about giving them a fair shot."

Was he concerned what Wulff thought?

"No."

This is known as letting the chips fall where they may. And Kelly has got it exactly right.

Neuheisel’s fake punt was a trick play against a defense that couldn’t defend it and was getting beaten soundly. Chip Kelly asking for a replay on a close play to make sure the call was correct is entirely different.

That being said, if the position is such that you think Chip is trying to “reward” the defense by challenging the call, then yes. You can’t argue with Neuheisel’s fake punt. He was rewarding his offense by giving them more opportunities.

Of course, I don’t believe Chip was doing that and he’s stated as such

I think it’s pretty much the same. Both Kelly’s and Neuheisel’s actions embarrassed the other team. But when Kelly does it, we say, well, he just wanted to make sure the call was right, and was defending his players. But when Neuheisel does it, he’s just a poor sport.

IMO, there’s no consistency to this. I have zero problem with Kelly’s call, or Neuheisel’s call. It’s a game. You compete on the field. Was there maliciousness behind Neuheisel’s actions? Maybe. But if Oregon’s not ready to play on a New Year’s Day bowl, that’s their own problem.

Because it had nothing to do with WSU…

It was their only score of the game. If it had nothing to do with them, why does their coach and players care?

Nicely put, Dominic.

As to the fake punt, and I cannot stress this enough, it was a New Years Day bowl. If there was ever a time to play to the end, it’s then. They were two very good teams. When it’s obvious that both teams are not at the same level, the whole spirit of competition thing may hold true, but Colorado and Oregon were two teams on the same level. It wasn’t the disparity that Oregon/WSU was. This was the highest level of competition, and Colorado played hard to the end. I have no problem what that.

Sportsmanship comes down to intent. What was Kelly’s motivation for challenging the score? What was Neuheisel’s motivation for the fake punt. Those motivations are likely the same (whether it is “rewarding” a unit, maximizing point differential for ratings, or being consistent in your philosophy to “play through the whistle”).

Your point about “unwritten rules” is oxymoronic. If a rule is unwritten, is it a rule? I think not.

What one person might call a “play call” a coach’s decision, a “challenge of play” might be called by someone else a coach’s decision. To that end, wouldn’t it be the perfect time to do a fake punt, when the other team wasn’t expecting it?

I totally disagree with the sentiments of “spirit of the game” “unwritten rules” and “sportsmanship” when we are talking about legal plays called inside the written rules of the game.

For that matter, why not get upset when a coach calls anything other than a run up the middle. Wouldn’t a run outside be a counter to a run up the middle and a “trick play.” More less a pass, or worse yet a play action pass. Might as well go ahead and take 3 knees and punt.

Once again, I think what Kelly did was fine, I think Wulff getting upset about is the problem.

What constitutes each of those is of course debatable, but I don’t think there’s any argument that these things don’t exist in some form, and that people’s decisions don’t lead to judgment according to them, and that they don’t lead to consequences or punishments.

It’s all a matter of degrees.

Taking the CU/UO and UO/WSU example, it’s clear that some find one or both of these classless or breaking the unwritten rule that you don’t beat someone when they’re down, that at some point besting someone turns from healthy competition and respectable victory to classless, mean spiritedness. For those two examples, what percentage finds the line crossed? I don’t know, 50%? Hence the debate? Were there consequences for “breaking” these fuzzy rules? Sure, minor, public opinion, maybe changed some kid’s mind about a coach, WSU wants to kill us next time, etc.

Taking a recent example of the Texas high school girls basketball team that beat another team after being up like 60-0 at half and deciding to hit 100-0, it’s clear that a greater percentage of people / the public / all of us found this to be tasteless. What percentage, 90%? If that’s not an unwritten rule that there is something called sportsmanship, I don’t know what is. If you don’t like the word “rule”, maybe you can agree that actions such as these crossed some line that the majority of all people would shun, leading to consequences like loosing respect, friends, opportunities because of it? Same thing, right, a “rule” was broken and it had punishment by others?

Go even further, there’s no written rule that says you can’t challenge a disabled guy to a game of one on one in open gym, set up some ground rules, and beat him 250-0 while physically punishing him, within the rules and the referee’s discretion. You can run him over on your way to the basket if he’s moving a little, if you want, those are the written rules of normal basketball competition. You could do this to an 8 year old girl too, no written rules.

Wouldn’t you be a dick, though?

Wouldn’t 99.9% of all people think you were a dick?

Wouldn’t you likely suffer consequences like people refusing to spend any time with you?

Point being, I think you can argue that either the Kelly or Weasel situations were in good taste or not, but I don’t think you can possibly ask people to leave the idea of sportsmanship at the door and say there’s no such thing.

If you really wanna go deep, at least at this point, the NCAA does have some written material and guidelines about sportsmanship, there are written proverbs like do unto others as you would have them do unto you, there’s the Bible and any other number of philosophical and religious treaties on how to treat other people. So you hit game time and fuck all that?

There’s a line. Maybe they crossed it, maybe they didn’t, but to say that there’s no line is missing the point.

That’s totally not what I wrote.

I was immature, it wasn’t a nice thing to do.

So the available “evidence” of intent is that Weasel wanted to be a dick, Kelly did not, albeit both are biased sources about their own image.

Obviously this is gray area, I’m not suggesting otherwise, but there’s no doubt in my mind that all actions are different and can and should be judged differently. One might be better or worse than the other, and therein lies the debate.

Call it splitting hairs if you like.