Apparently you can get flagged for attempting a practice field goal after being iced

Ohio was trailing Minnesota by three with seven seconds left when the Bobcats sent kicker Josiah Yazdani out for a 53-yard field goal, hoping to tie the game. But Minnesota opted to ice him -- and then the refs made a very strange decision:

As happens after almost every timeout to ice a kicker, the snapper snapped the ball, the holder held it, and the kicker kicked it. It’s a free practice kick, an opportunity for the kicker to test the on-field conditions and see what he needs to tweak to make the kick when it’s real. Often, the kicker doesn’t even realize it’s a practice kick -- there isn’t a ton of time between the whistle blowing and the ball being snapped.

The officials did something that seemingly *never* happens. They called a delay of game penalty on the Bobcats for kicking the ball. It’s obvious the delay of game wasn’t for the play clock expiring -- we don’t see the play clock, but the fact that Minnesota called timeout eliminates that from being a possibility.

The refs might be within their rights to do this. Included in the NCAA rulebook definition of “illegal delay”:

Deliberately advancing the ball after it is dead

Action clearly designed to delay the officials from making the ball ready for play

I’m not really sure this fits either of those two definitions. I certainly wouldn’t describe this as an action “clearly designed” to delay the game. And the referees have plenty of time to make the ball ready for play. Minnesota JUST CALLED A TIMEOUT, meaning there are over 30 seconds for them to trek the ball the 50-or-so yards from the end zone to the line of scrimmage. I’d argue kicking the ball doesn’t delay the game whatsoever.

But most importantly, there isn’t a ton of time between the whistle and the kick. You can’t say with any certainty that this was an intentional attempt to mess with the referees and not a legitimate attempt to kick the ball.

In the short term, it doesn’t matter much. Yazdani has never hit a 50-yarder, and it seems unlikely now was the time to start. But afterward, Ohio opted to throw a Hail Mary instead of trying a 58-yarder, and, well, it didn’t work.

In the long term, this kind of worries me. Referees routinely making this call on kickers attempting practice kicks would make football worse. For starters, as noted, there’s no way to discern intent, so it could end up penalizing earnest kicks. It would lead to fewer game-winning field goals, which would make football less fun.

And perhaps worst of all, it would probably lead to more coaches using timeouts to ice kickers, hoping to draw a delay call like this. That’s a thing that actually does delay games.

SB Nation presents: TCU and Oregon highlight a chaotic Week 4