End of Game, Nose Swats at Snap

[Derock2004]

Originally posted by Warrenkicker
We had a player at a varsity game earlier this season come over and ask us about swatting the ball out of the snapper's hands on a long snap. This long snapper would load-up on his snap and thus really wasn't a legal snap as he would pick the ball up slightly and move it forward a little before his backward motion. We said that nothing stopped him from trying as long as he didn't encroach.

They never tried to slap the ball so we didn't have to rule on if we should have had a dead-ball foul or just a loose ball. So I would say that when a player is able to knock the ball out of the snapper's hands that it is a legal play by the defense but can be an illegal snap if it didn't meet all of those requirements.

So what would you have had if you had to rule on this play? Is it a dead ball or live ball? Simply put I am curious to know what you will do if this happened in a game? Would you rule it a muff, fumble, delay of game, encroachment, what????