Offsides while subbing on the fly

[Sailmumm]

Here is a quick question for high school, when substituting a defender on the fly (assume even strength on both teams) and the person who is to come on next is delayed (in this case getting instructions from a coach) but he is still in the box is this offsides? There would be 2 defenders back and a goalie. The third defender is in the box waiting to come on.

[laxfan25]

Under Special Substitution, it says Art 2 d. ...and the substitute shall not delay his entry onto the field.
In this case I am going to be judicious, and if the delay is not overly long, and it seems that he is simply getting last-minute instructions, I've got no problem here.
In the past I did have one coach who purposefully held a player off the field, and that is a no-no, which would be an unsportsmanlike conduct foul.

[ref4ee]

Under Special Substitution, it says Art 2 d. ...and the substitute shall not delay his entry onto the field.
In this case I am going to be judicious, and if the delay is not overly long, and it seems that he is simply getting last-minute instructions, I've got no problem here.

This should be decided on the basis of advantage / disadvantage. If the play is in the other half of the field, there is really no advantage gained by the player in the box. If he comes in late and joins a play, then I probably have an illegal procedure call. If it was done on purpose to confuse, or the player hits an unsuspecting player as a result, then USC would be the right call.

[tjslax]

The first time this occurs I would try to determine advantage/disadvantage. Anything gained or lost would result in a flag. If the substitution "took too long" (some arbitrary amount of time I would determine when I saw it), I'd flag it, if not at the next dead ball I would probably walk over to both benches and tell them their players need to take the field as soon as the other player leaves the field. That would serve as my warning for both teams, and I would expect them both to comply.

[LaxRef]

The other thing is that if you didn't know the guy was delaying his sub and threw the flag for offsides because there were only two guys back (or three for the other team), that's offsides. The NCAA rules are pretty clear that a delayed sub doesn't get you a free pass on the offsides rule.