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This is one of the earliest rules Fed adopted to distinguish their football rules from those of NCAA. A desire to make the ball dead early and often for safety reasons was one motiv'n. Another was that it was adopted at a time when it was rare for a kickoff in interscholastic football to reach the opposing goal line w/o the assistance of the other team, and an automatic dead ball had the advantage of removing judgment of whether new impetus had been provided to a ball whose momentum from the kick had been spent.
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