Jake Locker Was Too Excited...

FSN's Barry Tompkins and Petros Papadakis were all over this one...

BYU was up seven as time was running out at Husky Stadium as they played the University of Washington. Washington QB Jake Locker scores with two seconds left to bring the game to one, 28-27. But as you watch the video ((below, thanks the youtube and FSN)) you see Locker take the ball and toss it over his shoulder after he scores.

The refs flag Locker for "unsportsmanlike conduct-excessive celebration." This pushes the point-after score back 15 yards from the original distance and creates, as Tompkins accurately describes, "Now, this is no gimme here..."

The kick is blocked. BYU escapes ((pictured, thanks Seattle P-I/Grant M. Haller)) and keep their national ranking for another week.

Molly Yanity's article from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer gives us some quotable material from the guys who wore the zebra shirts...

"After scoring the touchdown, the player threw the ball into the air and we are required, by rule, to assess a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty," Pac-10 referee Larry Farina told the Washington athletic communications staffer. "It is a celebration rule that we are required to call. It was not a judgment call."

Yeah, and it's also a silly rule... but the stripes can't do anything about that...
Change the rule into an on-field judgment call...
"And that is, purely, in the hands of the officials..."