Quote:
Originally Posted by Robert Goodman
If someone clearly got to it first, and you lost sight of it because it was sandwiched between the front of his frame and the ground, and not because of parallax, then yeah. Whatever other ruling you make -- because you can't see the ball as players struggle over it, and therefore don't know when it's dead -- will be arbitrary. You can make up a game like the one you described wherein you allow some players to continue to wrestle over it while you gradually eliminate others, but that has less cx with actual football than does my assertion of dead ball as soon as someone sandwiches it with the ground.
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I have never, in over 30 years of officiating, seen a player sandwich a ball to the ground with the front of his frame.
Tell you what. Take your kids out every day this week and have them flop directly on the football with the front of their frame. Try it with the ball at rest, then try it with the ball bounding about. Shoot, you can even have the kids standing directly over the ball at rest while they flop down on it.
Then, get back to us on how many times the ball stayed beneath them.
Also include the tally of the number of broken ribs your guys suffered by teaching this ball recovery method.