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Ok..boy I hope I got this right, because I convinced my crewmates that I was positive. I even credited Play-of-the-day which gave a similar scenario earlier this week.
This happened tonight in our JV game.
4th and 6 from K's 24. K is lined up to punt. K66 is the center. I am the umpire. Two defensive lineman are lined up in the gaps on either side of the center. The ball is snapped and the lineman shoot the gaps, while the center does the best he can. There is no roughing the snapper.
R's right guard picks up his block and they are engaged in the expanded neutral zone. The left guard misses his block and the defender is moving towards the kicker.
The kicker manages a low lined punt that hits our center K66 in the breadbasket which he manages to catch. I take a quick glance at the stick and see he caught the ball one yard beyond the line of scrimmage. My blockers from K and R are still engaged parallel to K66. I've declared that K has legally recovered the ball in the expanded neutral zone. I turn back to K66, wide eyed, supressing the urge to yell RUN. He looks at me, with the ball out at which time a player from R runs up and lightly engages K66 on the shoulders to prevent forward progress. I blow the play dead and spot the ball on K's 25 and signal first down for R.
Four referees immediately converge and want to know why I didn't call Kick Catching Interference. I told them that I checked where K caught the ball and he was in the expanded neutral zone. Also defending my case was that there was no one from R in position to play the low kick.
I wish the kid had ran. I'd have loved it if he'd made the first down. He was the 6'4" 200 pound kid on the JV you alwasy see too. Had he a started runnin... he might not have stopped.
So...anyone still up..west coasters out there. Did I get it right?
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