Have A Little Decorum

John Pelphrey stood in disbelief on the Bud Walton Arena court last Friday night.  Not because he was unhappy with the play of his Razorbacks during his first game as Arkansas head coach…but because he had taken his suit jacket off.

Uh…how’s that again?

With 16 minutes remaining and only a 37-28 lead over Wofford, Pelphrey was coaching his team hard.  In fact, he was starting to break a sweat.  (Although I’m not sure why…it actually seemed a little cool in the arena to me.  Not anything like when Nolan was around…the ‘Bud’ was like a sauna back in the day.)

So with little fanfare, Pelphrey took off his jacket and handed it to someone on the bench during a stoppage in play.  And that’s when referee Mark Whitehead came over and gave him a warning.  The perplexed look on Pelphrey’s face was priceless.

Eventually, thinking that the ref was just confused (which they usually are), Pelphrey pointed to a folded sheet of paper that he had removed from his jacket before handing it off.  It was like he was saying, ‘Look!  I was just getting my notes out!’

A few seconds later, while reacting after Sonny Weems was called for what seemed like the 50th touch foul of the night, Pelphrey was christened by Whitehead with the first technical foul of his Arkansas coaching career.

Fans later found out that Pelphrey was being warned about stomping his foot.  Well, actually, he was being warned about where he was stomping his foot.  Stomping inside the coaching box…fine.  Outside of it…technical foul.

And that’s the new world we are now apparently going to live in.  The NCAA is cracking down (or, as they say, making it a “point of emphasis”) on what they are calling a lack of “decorum” by college basketball coaches.  And SEC Supervisor of Officials Gerald Boudreaux, himself a former referee, put the word out about it last month:

“If a coach is out of the box and doing the wrong thing, it’s an automatic technical foul, no ifs, ands or buts about it,” Boudreaux said.

Search on Google and you’ll see that most coaches are not very happy.  And, as you can imagine, LSU coach John Brady is a little worried:

College basketball officials are charged with more consistently keeping coaches within the coaching box, and have guidelines spelling out “bench decorum rules.” Those rules say technical fouls can be issued for among other things a coach addressing an official disrespectfully, attempting to influence a call or using profanity.

It’s the “not limited to” part of the rule outlining offenses that can draw technicals that most worries Brady.

“Holy mackerel. What is that? That means whatever the official assumes or thinks,” he said. “That could be winking at him or waving or pointing.”

Okay…getting past the grotesqueness that is John Brady winking at an official…could this be the most stupid, politically correct stunt ever by the NCAA?

It would be laughable except for the serious consequences a technical foul can have on the momentum of a game.  This time it was Wofford.  But imagine if the Hogs were only up by nine points against Tennessee and they whistled Coach Pelphrey for ‘illegal stomping?’  A made technical free throw and a few three-point shots by Chris Lofton and it’s a whole new ball game.  (Never mind that Bruce Pearl will have already been ejected for ‘illegal sweating.’)

On the other hand, it took Stan Heath 14 games as head coach of the Hogs before he was called for his first technical foul.  Perhaps under these new rules, Heath would have been whistled for them more often.  Most Razorback fans would have probably considered that to be a good thing for a coach who was perceived as being too much of a ‘nice guy.’

As for Pelphrey, this time he decided to just grin and bear it:

Afterward, Pelphrey chuckled a bit about the technical foul. He had been stomping his foot loudly throughout the contest, but referees warned him about doing so out of the coach’s box.

[...] “I was a little surprised,” Pelphrey said. “It’s going to be interesting to see how that thing goes because I didn’t say a whole lot to get the technical foul. I guess there’s just a whole new deal going on right now.”

I say don’t worry about it, Coach.  Just keep stomping both the floor and the other team and everything will work out just fine.