As the basketball season nears, here’s a helpful hint for high school players:
Keep your shirt on.
This doesn’t mean control your temper . . . although you’ll have to do that too. It means, quite literally, keep your jersey on . . . and tucked in.
And, oh, by the way, don’t try any of that newfangled “jersey-popping” either. You know, that thing Illinois guard Dee Brown helped make popular, where you celebrate a play by grabbing the front of your jersey with both hands and flicking it out and in.
The National Federation of State High School Associations basketball rules committee is cracking down on jersey malfeasance in an effort to improve behavior, and the Illinois High School Association is passing the word to boys and girls coaches and referees at rules interpretation meetings.
This is actually serious stuff. Under a rules change, a player who pops his or her jersey, removes it or pulls it out of his or her shorts in the visual confines of the playing area will receive a technical foul.
The national federation also is toughening enforcement of an existing rule under which officials send players whose jerseys become inadvertently untucked out of the game, though they will not receive a technical and can return at the next subbing opportunity.
This creates some interesting scenarios, especially near the end of close games. A player who unthinkingly celebrates a good play with a jersey pop or reacts to a foul by tugging out his jersey could cost his team a game.
Or a game could turn on a play a star performer missed because he didn’t realize his jersey had come loose in the heat of battle.
The question, of course, is whether a bunch of uptight adults are sucking the joy and spontaneity from the game or whether this uniform code of conduct is a needed response to players’ using jerseys as statements instead of clothes.
“The concern of the national rules committee is that over the last few years there has been a rise in the number of non-sporting acts by players using their uniforms,” IHSA Assistant Executive Director Kurt Gibson said. “A classic example is a guy fouled out, thought it was a bad call and yanked his shorts out in a huge display to let everyone know it was a bad call.
“That seems to be occurring more and more, and it’s inciting behavior that leads to more problems.”
In recent years, officials had the latitude to tell players whose jerseys came loose in the heat of battle to tuck them back in and remove players after repeated transgressions. That, Gibson said, didn’t seem to work, which has led to the stricter policy, one enforced on dead-ball situations.
“We’ve got to clean the game up, and we can do that by requiring players to wear their uniforms properly,” Gibson said. “My hunch tells me that once a player or two is sent out, kids very quickly will realize when their shirts are untucked.”
You hope the officials will use common sense and not direct offenders to the bench the moment play stops. Glenbrook North All-State guard Jon Scheyer, for instance, finds that defenders frequently adjust his jersey to slow him down.
“They’re definitely grabbing it and pulling it out, and I always have to retuck it,” he said, “so I hope when the dead ball starts they give you a second to retuck.”
Scheyer otherwise supports the rules changes, though he believes a technical foul for pulling out one’s own jersey may be too stiff a penalty.
Von Steuben coach Vince Carter also likes most of the rules changes, especially assessing a technical for deliberate jersey yanking.
“To me it’s part of being spoiled,” Carter said. “Why do you have to come to the bench and pull your jersey out of your pants? Why not just sit down?”
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Carter, though, opposes assessing a technical foul for jersey-popping.
“I see no difference thumping your shirt to get the crowd to yell or waving a towel above your head to get the crowd to yell,” he said.
Gibson said the rules committee looks at jersey-popping as taunting and therefore as a non-sporting act.
“It’s usually done toward the other fans, like `Here we are. We’re here tonight,'” Gibson said.
“You see it more in the pros and colleges. High school players want to try to emulate what they see on ESPN, but that really has no place in the high school game.”
Illinois’ Brown understands how people can interpret popping as taunting but said for him it’s more a celebration of his team than of himself.
“When I did it I wanted to represent my school, that we are on a roll, and show opposing fans this is who I represent, this is my school.
“It is a form of taunting in a way, but I don’t think there’s any negative taunting involved in it.”
Brown and Carter seem to be saying it’s not necessarily what you do but how and why you do it, and they have a point.
Deliberate yanking should be out of bounds, and intent should be the key with jersey-popping too. Officials have the latitude to judge chest bumps, high fives and the like in context, assessing penalties if those acts are obvious attempts to taunt or intimidate.
Jersey-popping should get the same treatment, but until it does players will have to beware of giving away style points.
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