[washingtonismoney]

Well, he was mistaken about the facts but that seems like the wrong emphasis. The problem with that article isn't that his facts are wrong, but that his opinion is stupid. He concedes the targeting call is the right call. We know what the penalty is for that; it's well-established. It may be a "soft" instance of the penalty but that's in the nature of rules. If you have a law forbidding behavior there will by nature be some relatively borderline cases.

Of course we also know that there's enforcement discretion; some rules we don't care about borderline cases all that much. What's your reaction when you get pulled over for driving 60 on a 55 MPH speed limit section of the highway? Thought so.

But we don't want to use enforcement discretion for serious rules, like say, murder. And within the norms of the game of football targeting is closer to murder than it is speeding (which I suppose would be more like holding.) So if you'd prefer to avoid punishments for soft instances of targeting:

a) don't do it
b) legislate an actual lower tier of targeting.

But that's not a problem with the officials and it certainly isn't worth writing a whiny article about.

(also, there is no Hoover on the football team, if we want to catalogue stupid errors in the piece.)

[washingtonismoney]

Well, he was mistaken about the facts but that seems like the wrong emphasis. The problem with that article isn't that his facts are wrong, but that his opinion is stupid. He concedes the targeting call is the right call. We know what the penalty is for that; it's well-established. It may be a "soft" instance of the penalty but that's in the nature of rules. If you have a law forbidding behavior there will by nature be some relatively borderline cases.

Of course we also know that there's enforcement discretion; some rules we don't care about borderline cases all that much. What's your reaction when you get pulled over for driving 60 on a 55 MPH speed limit section of the highway? Thought so.

But we don't want to use enforcement discretion for serious rules, like say, murder. And within the norms of the game of football targeting is closer to murder than it is speeding (which I suppose would be more like holding.) So if you'd prefer to avoid punishments for soft instances of targeting:

a) don't do it
b) legislate an actual lower tier of targeting.

But that's not a problem with the officials and it certainly isn't worth writing a whiny article about.

(also, there is no Hoover on the football team, if we want to catalogue stupid errors in the piece.)