Defensive player dives over the top of an offensive lineman prior to the ball being snapped. Obviously he encroached. What about a personal foul penalty? How would you mark off this penalty? Thanks!

Depending on how server the hit is, Personal foul. 9-4-3-g says that "No player shall make any other contact with an opponent which is deemed unnecessary and which incites roughness."
Enforce as a dead ball 15 yards from succedding spot.

If it is deemed flagarant you should also disqualify the defensive player

Thanks for the input. Would you also penalize the encroachment? We had this happen in youth football this weekend. The white hat enforced 5 plus 15. I didn't agree with him (I was the Linesman), but didn't say anything to him since he had the head coach screaming at him.

I beleive you do enforce both penalties in order of occurance. So you would first enforce the encroachment and then the personal foul.

"dives over the top" implies to me NO Contact. In this case "without contact", you only have encrouchment.

There is a slim possibility it is unsportsmanlike but he would have to be a big showboat to throw that one.

Only a PF if he lands on someone (like QB). And yes - this is 2 fouls.

A couple years ago, the LB tried to time the snap and jumped over the line of scrimmage. He grabbed the QB by the facemask. We penalized both encroachment and a 15-yard facemask foul.

I'd say grasping the face mask would constitute contact!

I'd like to see a defensive lineman leap over the offense and not make contact with anyone

This is a good one. Definitely, encroachment. Then I would penalize or warn depending upon the contact. If the contact is especially egregious it could end with a disqualification. If it only slight, the player gets warned along with the coach. Probably, the penalty would be somewhere in that gray zone.

I also agree that the term "dive over" means that the defender went head first over the lineman and did not touch him or the touching was slight. This is clearly not a hurdling situation if the lineman was in a set position with a hand on the ground. So any contact would be the deciding factor in whether to throw a DB PF flag.

I would say that a "dive over" in and of itself, even if there is some contact, does not necessarily constitute a PF. If the lineman tries, unsucessfully, to anticipate the snap count, I would have a hard time seeing this as flagrant enough to have a PF.

I guess you would have to see it. It was a LB, and he came from a couple of yards back. It was really uncalled for. He landed on the back of an offensive lineman in his 3 point stance. He could of really hurt him.