The New Dumbest Rule

Quick: how high is high?

Apparently, the correct answer spells the difference between winning and losing in college football.

The referees at Saturday's Washington-BYU game flagged UW quarterback Jake Locker for an "excessive celebration" penalty when he scored a last-minute touchdown to pull the Huskies to within a point of the nationally-ranked Cougars, and then celebrated by tossing the ball in the air.

The refs invoked NCAA Rule 9.2(c) and penalized Washington 15 yards on the extra-point attempt, which was then blocked to seal a BYU win.

This moronic rule prohibits a player from scoring and then--and I quote here from the rulebook--"throwing the ball high into the air".

Give me a break. How high is high? A foot? Two feet? 35 feet?

The ref whose crew flagged Locker said, "It was not a judgment call." Excuse me? Of course it was a judgment call. Somebody had to decide that Locker's toss was "high".

It's easy to blast the refs for throwing the flag. Probably they shouldn't have. But what about the brain-dead NCAA suits who wrote the rule in the first place? Can anyone explain why there's a need to legislate against exuberance in college sports?