Quote:
Originally Posted by MD Longhorn
While I agree that your interpretation makes sense, it's not within the letter of the rule. Personally, I think this one of the most poorly written new rules I've seen in a while.
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It is, which is why I don't think anybody's likely to enforce it as written. Rather, they'll enforce it as if it were NCAA's wording, i.e. in relationship to the ball when it's kicked, because otherwise it'll have to be like, hmm, where was the guy who just kicked the ball a few secs. before he kicked it, and where was everybody else on his team?
it's like Fed thought they were being all clever by adopting their own provision separate from other codes to try to achieve the same effect while being "original" or "creative" or some such. There was a time when Fed's rules writing was so good it was a model of clarity for other codes, but they didn't get that way by thinking like this. That era ended ~35 yrs. ago, but it's taken a long time for this much badness to accumulate, as they were working from what had become a very good base over the preceding ~35 yrs.