Inquiring Minds Want To Know ???

[mbyron]

As a metaphysical point, 7-2-1 is just wrong, in general, about causation. I do not have to touch a thing to cause it to move, which is lucky when you think about hammers and nails or any other tool or instrument.

The rule is there to make OOB an easy call: last to touch caused it to be OOB. We don't see causation directly, but we do see (or can see) touching.

The infrequent problem cases arise when the two criteria -- touching and causing -- come apart, and the last to touch did NOT cause the ball to go out of bounds.

At that point, it makes sense (to me at least) to go with the spirit of the rule: whoever actually caused the ball to be OOB violated. My view is that the rule pertains mainly to causation, and uses touching as a guideline to determining causation. If the guideline fails in a particular case, don't use it then.

I think that it's also worth mentioning that, though infrequent, this kind of thing does happen, maybe once per game or every other game.