Quote:
Originally Posted by mbcrowder
I would not attempt to tell you what you're thinking. I base what I said on what you SAY, for this is all I have to go on. If you don't think what you say, don't say it. Here's your quote: My point was that from this statement, you say you WANT the rules to be something. The rest of us, fortunately, just base our rulings on the ACTUAL rules, and not what we want them to be.
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But in this case it's just obvious the rules writers didn't mean what they wrote. Unless they make an extended statement backing it up, I'm taking anything official written that appears to back it up as just noise.
Look at it this way (jumping off from another thread): The home team was behind, and have just given up another score (FG or TD & try), and you ask their captain if they want to kick off or receive, and the answer you hear is, "Kick off, yeah." Would you just go ahead and make the ball ready for play for them to kick off? Or would you call him close and make really clear that you were asking him which team he wants to kick off?
That's how I'm taking this circumstance. Unfortunately none of you have the att'n of the rules committee that you could get from a team captain. So until there's clarif'n that makes really clear they're taking into account both ordinary and extraordinary cases of people formerly touching the ground having contact with the ball over land that's out of bounds, I don't care what a literal reading of the rules says, they
meant it to be a dead ball if a player touches out of bounds and then plays it there before coming back to the ground out of bounds. And they didn't mean it to be a foul if someone just tries to play the ball while trying, but failing, to keep feet in bounds.