Steelers Center Question
 

Not that it has a material effect on the game or anything, but I noticed during the Pittsburgh - KC game on Sunday that Pittsburgh's Center turns the ball horizontal to the line of scrimmage prior to snapping it.

This is something I've seen in pee-wee football games, and which is always immediately corrected.

I'm wondering if anyone else has noticed it. Any Steeler fans here? Why does the NFL lets him do it? Personally, I'd think the NFL would want to stop it just because it looks so bad. Is this legal in the NFL? Does he gain an advantage by doing it? (Maybe a quicker snap or fewer missed exchanges)

The NFL officials pretty much let the center do whatever he wants with the ball - I've never seen a center penalized for lifting, sliding, etc. the ball. By the same token, after the center slides the ball forward a yard or so, they don't worry too much about defensive lineman being a touch offsides.

These things are both illegal in the NFL, they just let both go.

I have an NFL training DVD which shows a goal line situation where the ball was on the 1/2 yard line. The offense comes up to the ball and the center moves the ball forward to about the 1/4 yard line and now the entire D-line is offsides. The supervisor who is doing the voiceover for the video says "do not penalize the defense on the play as the center moved the ball. There is no foul on the play." As Jim said, they just let it go.

NFL Rule 7, Article 3...

(a) The snap must start with ball on ground with its long axis horizontal and at right angles to line...


I was never that good at math, but wouldn't a football's long axis be from point to point? How is that horizontal unless it's parallel to the line of scrimmage?

I wish all football rule books were written in English.

That's what I figured, it just seems so unusual to see a center turn the ball horizontal to the line of scrimmage. I just wonder how the center ever got in the habit of doing that since he couldn't do it at any level before the NFL.

Maybe they mean horizontal to the ground so the center can't tilt the ball in the air (which is also usually allowed).

Ah, that makes sense. Horizontal meaning not sticking up in the air. Okay, makes sense to me now.

What other kind of horizontal is there?

The other thing that kinda gets me is when the offense lines up in a V shape--that is, the interior lineman cleary aren't all on the LOS. This gets called once every couple of years. I still haven't figured out what a team does to be penalized for this or why they decide to enforce this so sporatically. I know the NFL is a business and it doesn't make money for a team to be penalized for the 'V' or for the snapper moving the ball, but I just don't understand how they decided when (and when not) to call this.