Quote:
Originally posted by ChuckElias
I saw this in an NCAA game on ESPN tonight. Player caught the kick-off just inside his own end zone. He took one step forward, so that his front foot was outside the endzone. The rest of his body was in the endzone, and it looked like the ball was still completely inside the endzone. He then stepped back so both feet were in the endzone and knelt. The officials called a touchback, which seemed reasonable to me, but the announcer (we know how reliable they are on rules questions) said it should've been a safety.
I'm just curious what the basis for the ruling is, the position of the feet or of the ball?
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Not sure about the philosophy of the American game, but I do know that there are officials positioned on the goal line for sitch's where a touchback might be called.
In the Cdn game, everything is about the position of the ball, and nothing relates to the position of the player.
So, should the above happened in our game, with a rule set to govern how to handle the play, it would be a touchback, since the ball never left the endzone.
Also, in our game, the goal line is part of the endzone, so even if only the last inch of the ball is touching the endzone, when the player stepped forward, it is still in the endzone. (This is consistent with just the front tip of the ball requiring to touch/break the plane of the goal line, where it bounds the field of play, to award a TD.)