The software called my att'n to this "similar thread":
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Ed Hickland
Oakland Raiders - KC Chiefs today. Larry Nemmers calls Oakland player for tripping the runner QB, Trent Green.
Not an NFHS rule. Why does the NFL prohibit it?
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It
was a longstanding rule in football that NFL inherited from NCAA, dating from the 19th Century, so it's actually pre-NCAA. It's only relatively recently that any of the codes allowed tripping the runner.
I remember when NCAA amended the definition of "tripping" to allow it, around 25 years ago IIRC. At that time I wondered the opposite of the above question: why would NCAA want to
allow this? Fed must've changed more recently than that.
The basic idea behind the rule disallowing it is that tripping is too cheap a way to bring down a runner, and also that shin-on-shin contact is bruising. Similarly to Greco-Roman wrestling, for a brief period in the 19th Century rugby football forbade
any form of tackling below the waist, and American football inherited that rule, although both codes soon re-allowed it. (American football went thru a brief period of allowing tackling only above the knees; Canadian football stuck to the prohibition against tackling below the waist considerably longer.) Rugby had been coming out of a period in which "hacking over" a runner -- basically leg-whipping or karate-kicking him down -- had been allowed, and they were trying to live that era down. So tripping ws forbidden at the same time hacking was.
So don't get the idea this was some innovation on NFL's part!
Robert