Rule Proposal – Blood Rule

Cross Post: Captains’ Club

Written by Brandon Meisel:

If at any time a player has blood on their clothes or person, they will receive 30 seconds to remove any and all traces of blood from their clothes and/or person. If the player cannot remove the blood in the allotted time, the team will be forced to take a time out, and sub the player out. If the team doesn’t have any timeouts left, the player will be taken out of the game, and will ineligible for the remainder of the point (not match). The clocks will then be reset according to the team timeouts rule. (The team that has the player with the blood will act as the team that is calling the timeout.) However, if the team with the bloodied player has a throw clock that is above 10 (for the 15 count) or above 5 (for the 10 count) their shot clock will be reset down to that number (10 or 5) in order to allow them enough time to throw.

Rationale:

As for the change in the blood rule: Shit happens, and people bleed. As a person who does not tape their fingers unless I am bleeding, I don’t think it is right that I would need to be subbed out of the game when I can simply tape the bloody finger in 30 seconds, and prevent the blood from being spread.

As for reseting for the clocks: We are trying to preserve the shot clock in terms of whose throw it is. If we simply reset the clocks back to 0, the team that was supposed to throw, now has an advantage. However, if they are set back according to the team timeouts rule, the game will be able to follow how it was going before the blood was spotted. With that said, if a team has a shot clock of 13, but a player on that team was found to have blood on them right at that moment, that would mean after the 30 seconds, that team would have 2 seconds to get a throw off. This would most likely result in a balls over and a huge advantage for the other team. So instead, the team with the blood would be rounded down to 10, in order to have time to throw.

Author: Kevin Bailey

Current NCDA Chief of Content. Former Captain for Grand Valley State University (#4).

One thought on “Rule Proposal – Blood Rule”

  1. Suggestion: Change blood time to the referee’s discretion. “A bloodied player may, after a referee is notified, step out of bounds, fix the issue without the worry of being hit, and step back in bounds at the head or assistant referee’s discretion. If, in a referee’s opinion, a player is taking too long to fix the issue (say 5 minutes) then he shall be given a warning and declared out soon thereafter.”

    Rationale: A hard rule, like 30 seconds, could mean a player rushes to fix the blood and save a time out, then later on in the game bleeds again, causing more disruption. Also, we all know how often tape flies off people’s fingers.

    Additionally, this will allow for the flow of the game to continue, uninterrupted (except for removing a bloodied ball).

    Downfalls: Puts more responsibility on referees. Additionally, may have an undesired effect on the shot clock if the player re-enters the game and puts his team from 5 players to 6 players.

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