Thread: Out of bounds
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Old Sun Feb 05, 2012, 07:47pm
Robert Goodman Robert Goodman is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cjjr View Post
OK, I am having a hard time getting a hold of this one: NFHS rules, 2-29-2. The way it reads a ball carrier, tip toeing the side line, could step on a fallen player that is out of bounds, step back in bounds and keep running! Can someone help me out with the intent of the rule and is my view of it wrong! Thanks
Your view of it is not wrong. Your intuition is probably that a body flat on the ground is as good as the ground, like an object (such as a pylon) on the ground, but that's not how it's written. I think the rules makers didn't want to try to distinguish between cases like the above and those where a player is supported by the ground out of bounds but not laying flat.

If the player instead of merely being stepped on shoved the ball carrier back towards the field, that would be flagged for helping the runner.
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