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Originally Posted by TXMike
In NCAA rules, forward passes were first allowed in 1906. At the same time, the rulemakers recognized the need for limiting eligibility and that change which authorized one forward pass said there had to be 7 players on the line of scrimmage and only the 2 on the ends would be eligible to receive that now legal forward pass. At that time, nobody was numbered. The requirement to even have numbers came in the game did not come until 1937. By 1966 teams were taking advantage of the rules and running tackle eligible passes.
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Do we have to rehash all this? Tackle eligible plays had been common all along! Teams very frequently used shifts & motion to disguise who was on the end of the offensive line. And that was before the heads-and-hips rules for determining who was on the line and who in the backfield; take a look at the positioning rules from those days (still carried in the NFL book as the rule, but ruled according to the "guideline" that is the NCAA rule), and you'll see how hard that could be for both the defense and officials!
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So to address this inequity,
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Why was
that the "inequity", rather than the liberal substitution rules that made subbing in better receivers who could line up at tackle or end more attractive? (A side effect of the itty-bitty change that made offensive & defensive platoons once again feasible?)
Robert