Quote:
Originally Posted by football-1
Before 1999 there was a different rule in the NFL, forward pass, ball touches ground.
Does somebody know the exact wording of the rule back then ?
Or straight before 1999 the exact wording for incomplete pass ?
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For a long time the NFL (holding over an old NCAA rule IIRC) rule on player possession included the criterion "able to perform any act common to the game", which of course cleared up nothing.
Everyone's code on forward passes (except, maybe, now NFL's) has the ball becoming dead, and therefore the pass ending, on touching the ground, meaning that the pass had to be completed before the ball touched the ground. It was also widely understood that trapping a loose ball against the ground was one way to gain possession of it, but the trapping was understood to require a finite amount of time with the ball in contact with the ground, while touching was instantaneous, so that the apparent tie between the ball's touching the ground and coming into possession was resolved in favor of touching the ground coming first.