Quote:
Originally Posted by Robert Goodman
There was no rule against batting either team's backward pass in any direction as long as it didn't go out of bounds. So one coach had the ostensible holder for a place kick arise slightly and then toss the ball up for the ostensible kicker to volleyball serve forward, then his team scrambled for the ball and recovered it for a touchdown.
|
totally separate from the A-11 issue, i'm intrigued by this scenario. Mostly I'm having a difficult time seeing what the potential advantage to be gained by this loophole would be.
are you talking about a team lining up for a field goal or a point after?
how would volleyball serving the ball forward then scrambling for it be any more advantageous than simply throwing a forward pass? I can see that you'd have the "bonus" of the ball being live after it hits the ground. (as opposed to an incomplete forward pass, which is of course dead)...but is the offense any more likely to fall on that batted ball than the defense is?
when would it make sense to do this? If you're lined up to kick a point after, the odds of recovering the volleyball serve couldn't have been any greater than simply lining up to go for two, right?
if it was a short field goal try, would you sacrifice an "easy" three points for the risk/reward of recovering a loose ball in the endzone?
I freely admit that I could be missing something about this play that would give the offense an (unfair) advantage. assuming that it would behoove the offense to do that, how about this?
holder takes snap, kicker moves in directly behind holder. holder turns and fires a backwards pass off the kickers helmet. ball rebounds forward. as it would in the volleyball serve scenario--granted you couldn't control it as well as a volleyball serve, but you could probably get it forward.
rules wise, I don't think there'd be anything illegal here, at least according to the NCAA book. there is the rule against advancing a planned loose ball in the vicinity of the snapper (fumblerooski). but if you cleared the snapper with this ricochet backwards pass, I think you'd be ok on 7-1-7.