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Old Sun Jan 11, 2009, 12:07am
Robert Goodman Robert Goodman is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2007
Posts: 2,897
Quote:
Originally Posted by daggo66 View Post
This would never work. I don't care how many games you have officiated or worked, the game of football is not played that way. A makes the decision of whether or not to punt independently of B's formation. It all depends on down and distance, time, and situation. B would never send someone deep just to allow A to sub. They wouldn't want the "good" snapper in the game. They would wait until the last second then drop someone back. That has got to be one of the wackiest things anyone has come up with on this forum (and that alone says alot!) Furthermore you state, "the officials would allow time for A to sub in numbers outside of 50-79." WTF?
I mean exactly that. If the formation rules were amended to go along with what I described here, there would have to be a compesnating change in the substitution and delay-of-game provisions. If at any time the ball was ready for play team B assumed scrimmage kick formation (already described), then the officials would stop the play clock, announce the availability of the numbering exception, and allow subs to enter for team A provided they were wearing 1-49 and/or 80-99. A would be allowed time to re-huddle before the play clock was restarted.

This takes all the judgement of the likelihood of a scrimmage kick out of the officials' hands and makes it team B's responsibility. Team B can play vs. kick coverage if they want to, depending on their formation. Because outside of the narrow world of this forum, nobody is proposing a rule hinging on whether a kicking play is likely, any more than they would want to set pass interference rules on whether a pass play was likely. I guarantee you that making it a judgement call would never even be considered by any football rules committee. NCAA's language, which combines "obvious" naively with "may", would be completely ineffectual if anyone attempted to run A-11. If anyone tried A-11 in any circuit playing NCAA rules, it would take an explicit ruling from the organiz'n (such as Texas HSAA) that it was illegal.

Robert