Anyone know the rule on incidental out of bounds contact?

[Maxconvert]

Clearly Stafford got pushed into the MSU receiver during the horrible out of bounds hit call, but Stafford was doing his darndest before the contact to signal that it was inadvertent, by putting up his hands before he made contact with the guy. I've seen guys do this a lot when they think contact is incidental, but it seems like it just draws attention to the play by the refs instead, almost like an admission of guilt. Do refs use body language like this to make their decisions?

 

[NebraskaHarry]

Just a bad call. Can't do anything about it. It went both ways for each team.

 

[Count 'Bility]

Stafford may have been able to do more to not make the contact, like go around Maxwell, HOWEVER, when youre playing in a complete dump like that where they have to put the band on the field, there's just no where to go. What a ridiculous situation. Ok St and OU come to mind.

 

[Maxconvert]

Stafford may have been able to do more to not make the contact, like go around Maxwell, HOWEVER, when youre playing in a complete dump like that where they have to put the band on the field, there's just no where to go. What a ridiculous situation. Ok St and OU come to mind.

It looked like Stafford did everything he could possibly do to signal it was inadvertent, but of course with the crowd howling for a flag seems like the refs didn't give any benefit of the doubt to him. You could tell they knew they blew the call though, because when MSU hit our guy out of bounds (think it was Abdullah) a few plays later they threw several flags immediately to sort of make it up to us.

Not sure what else Stafford could have done. The TV broadcast showed him emphatically trying to explain he was pushed, but to no avail.

 

[HuskerInLostWages]

I do know it's similar to the halo rule when fair catching. If you're pushed into the guy you wont get a flag. I'm thinking it was a bad call and they gave us one back for Abdullah because they missed the guy pushing Stafford out of bounds.

 

[Hammerhead]

I do know it's similar to the halo rule when fair catching. If you're pushed into the guy you wont get a flag. I'm thinking it was a bad call and they gave us one back for Abdullah because they missed the guy pushing Stafford out of bounds.

That's my understanding on it. If you're not pushed into the guy, whether it's incidental or not, they will call it a penalty though.