Talk:Penalty flag

History/info to add

High school penalty flags used to be red-and-white quarters. We need to find a reference for when they switched to yellow.

Additionally, CFL flags are orange. We should find out the history of their flags and why they went orange, or whether everybody just diverged from red, but not as far. —C.Fred (talk) 23:57, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Merge suggestion

This article is so short and so closely related to Penalty (American football) that it makes sense to merge it into there. Does anyone agree or not? Hellno2 (talk) 14:52, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, unless its relevance to other sports such as lacrosse is increased, I think this article belongs as a section in American Football. I'd make sure to keep the content by whomever added the Orlando Brown incident, it comes up a lot in discussion and such. We may want to create a section called Flags instead of Penalty Flags, so it could include Challenge Flags ( red ), and about Flag Football? Thoughts? BaShildy (talk) 22:51, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose. As noted above, the usage section can be expanded to include challenge flags—since those flags are effectively the same design of flag as penalty flags. Additionally, the jump from the lacrosse article straight into a football article, for a link of flags, would be glaring. I'm willing to revisit this issue in a few months, but I think it's better to expand in place than move, expand, and split back off. —C.Fred (talk) 20:05, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose I think this article is a good quality stub. Merging would become more clumsy.--Paul McDonald (talk) 04:08, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

How do we prevent rewriting the content in Instant_replay_in_American_and_Canadian_football, so that we can reuse what looks at first glance to be a pretty good article. Any idea on how these articles should be linked? BaShildy (talk) 22:51, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

• Closing Yeah, I'm one of a few participants... but it looks to me like we're not going to merge because the discussion has been dead. I'll remove the merge tags on the top of the page and call it good.--Paul McDonald (talk) 14:28, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

• Support This article could be merged. Challenge flags are included on the Replay review in gridiron football page, and redirect to there. Secondly, penalty flags are used anytime there is a penalty, so it makes sense that that would be explained on Penalty (American football). FormalDude talk 01:30, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

WHY ?

LOL, there is a wikipedia article about a "penalty flag" and it is not explained WHY the flag is used, i.e. for WHAT PURPOSE it exists ?? the only thing which comes remotely close to answering the question is "to mark the location of penalties", but why is that even necessary? In soccer the referee just whistle and do NOT throw flags, so what is different in American football that requires these flags ? --boarders paradise (talk) 17:46, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

It's discussed more in articles on American football and its rules, that the flag is used to mark the location of the foul. The play is allowed to continue in most situations, not just "advantage" situations like in soccer and rugby, so the flag marks where enforcement of the penalty will be from if it is accepted. It's also a visual cue: if a quarterback sees the flag thrown at the snap, he can assume the defense jumped offsides, so he has a free play (knowing that he can just come back after the fact, accept the penalty, and replay the down). —C.Fred (talk) 17:56, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Late reply, but here goes: in American football play will resume after the foul either at the point where the foul occurred or at some prescribed distance from that point so that the exact location of the foul is important to know. --Khajidha (talk) 19:52, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

"Many officials previously weighted flags with BBs"

they wrapped a gun in a flag?? --boarders paradise (talk) 17:48, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

"BBs" in this context refers not to the weapon, but to Ball bearing, commonly used in mechanical applications. UnsanctionedStyle (talk) 07:08, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, a BB gun is so called because their ammunition is actually copper ball bearings propelled by compressed gas. oknazevad (talk) 00:48, 19 September 2015 (UTC)