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Originally Posted by Texas Aggie
I agree with the others. You have to follow your rules code. However, as the title suggests, this is a good reason for FED to adopt the NCAA rule in this case. This rule has a lot of potential for abuse. If the defense sees that a wideout is uncovered (by the defense) they can simply jump offsides and take the penalty -- who wouldn't take 5 yards over a TD? This can be coached.
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It's been there for ~40 years, and you're right, and they're "right" too. In NCAA it just takes a little more to do it; the offside player has to commit encroachment by contact, or better yet (to get att'n), snatching the ball from the center. Yeah, great "defense" against a quick play.
(BTW, so-called "cynical" offsides in rugby to kill a team's momentum has been a similar problem in that it's hard to penalize equitably.)
During the 1960s (for I don't know how long) Fed had the same rule as now,
except that if the ball was snapped too quickly for the whistle to be blown, play was to be allowed to continue. So you essentially allowed advantage or no advantage depending how quick you were with the whistle!
One reason I believe was cited for adopting kill-the-ball was to avoid situations in which a player's entering the NZ blocked an opponent's view of the ball, and then the opponent went offside too. It seemed wrong to allow a futile play to proceed, and also to have the fouls offset, when the second player's encroachment on the NZ was caused by the opponent's going offside first. Killing the ball on the first encroachment also avoided the judgement of "spontaneous reaction charge", and it relieved team A from putting the ball into play quickly just to draw the penalty. So I can't say Fed has the wrong idea, even though intuition says to allow the nonoffending team a choice.
Robert