Distance Penalty Declined Enforcement Spot Question

[Bob M.]

Originally Posted by CO ump

You CANNOT accept a penalty and decline the "distance" which goes with the penalty...As I said before, when you accept the penalty, you accept the enforcement spot plus the prescribed distance for the penalty. You can't have one without the other.
When you decline we play on as if there had been no foul.

REPLY: In NCAA rules, you're correct, but you're not correct under Federation rules. In Federation rules, the offended team is most certainly allowed to accept the penalty but not have the yardage assessed. Take a look at Case Book play 10.1.1 Situation B. Yardage is the only element of a penalty that a team is allowed to decline separately. Replay of a down, loss of down, automatic first down are other elements of a penalty that cannot be declined without declining the whole penalty.