Former Alabama star (and NFL bust) running back Trent Richardson made his Alliance of American Football debut over the weekend, as his two TDs helped lead Birmingham to an easy win over Memphis.
He did, however, fall victim to one of the league’s oddest rules as he got flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct for spiking the ball after scoring a TD. Many fans were quick to call out the AAF for being lame about penalizing players for TD celebrations, saying things like the “No Fun League” ended the week before and that they thought this new football league was going to be a little more laid back.
But now we know why he was flagged – in short, the footballs are expensive because they have tracking devices inside them and the league has a rule about not allowing players to throw them into the crowd. Richardson’s spike took an unexpected bounce into the stands and the flag was thrown:
Here’s more details on the situation, from FootballZebras.com:
Throwing the football in the stands is a 15 yard [unsportsmanlike conduct] foul. … The balls will be equipped with tracking device chips —that means no souvenirs.
While this is technically not an example of “throwing the football in the stands” intentionally, the overriding clause of the rule is “no souvenirs”, which disallows any act that causes the football ends up in the stands, obviously excepting actual gameplay. This was a late add to the playing rules, and it is due to the balls being embedded with RFID tracking chips, allowing fans to “discover the speed, spin rate and trajectory” of the football.
In this case, it seems the rule is in place for budgetary reasons.
Mike Pereira, Fox’s NFL ref guru, however, weighed in on the call on Monday and said Richardson shouldn’t have been flagged:
So yeah, the AAF and its officials have some things they still need to work on after the first week of the season.
Though it does make sense that a startup league wouldn’t want to see players firing these pricy footballs into the crowd or handing them to fans. Every dollar matters.
