Quote:
Originally Posted by scrounge
That strikes me as a rather bizarre way of looking at it. I agree with you, he did indeed intend to make a place kick. So we agree that this clause is where intent matters - and we have satisfied that part. That's necessary - but not sufficient.
Why? Because the kick has to be a legal free or scrimmage kick, by black letter of the rule. It can't be a legal scrimmage kick in this instance if it's not controlled on the ground or a kicking tee by a teammate. And it isn't - intent doesn't matter here, for this part. It's either controlled or not. And in this case, it's not, which means it's not a legal scrimmage kick.
So we've established intent and we've determined that, by rule, it's not a legal scrimmage kick. How is it anything other than illegal kicking?
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AFAICT, it's a nothing. It's not a legal kick, and it's not illegally kicking the ball as penalizable by 9-7.
Sometimes the definition section of Fed rules helps, but in other cases it seems to go over the same ground as the substantive rules w/o clarifying. This seems to be one of those latter instances. In the definitions, "a kick is the intentional striking of the ball with the...foot," which this is. Then in art. 4 it defines "a legal scrimmage kick", giving the same requirements as discussed here, and in article 9 it says "an illegal kick is any intentional striking of the ball with the...foot which does not comply with" those requirements. So the definition says this is an illegal kick. But what good does that do when 9-7-1, where the penalty is, does not reference the defined term "illegal kick", but instead is a new departure? It would've been so simple to just say, "No player may make an illegal kick," & specify the penalty for that. But noooo, it just says, "No player shall intentionally kick the ball other than as a free or scrimmage kick." What was the point of defining a term that doesn't get used? Rule 2 has been worked over by people who didn't pay att'n to the substantive provisions of the book, it seems.
I suppose you could parse 9-7-1 in a way to
make this come out as illegal kicking, taking the "intentionally kick the ball" as a separate factual determination, and then observing that the
result was not a legal scrimmage kick, but usually when the word "intentionally" is used like this in the rules, it applies broadly to the entire action. So I think it's supposed to refer to the type of kick the player intended to make, not just the mere fact of kicking the ball, fair or foul.
It also seems harsh to make this a strict liability issue, so that the team of the player who merely follows thru with the kick as the ball starts to come loose (and probably couldn't avoid kicking the ball if he wanted to) is penalized, when that team is already getting nothing good out of the play. However, it would be consistent with the ruling in NCAA. Still, if they want the same outcome, they should word their rules the same.