NCAA Question @ Defensive returns

[Robert Goodman]

Originally Posted by JugglingReferee

If FC ever had 2-way scoring on PATs, it was way before my time. And for long as I've known, the CFL has had 2-way scoring on PATs.

It's remarks like the above that lead me to believe football officials have short careers, almost as short as the players'.

Seems I'm older than most readers here (I'm 53) and on top of that I'm a scholar on the history of this game. To me, 2 way scoring on tries is a fairly recent thing. NCAA adopted it first, then CFL shortly afterward. Football Canada (it may have still been CAFA) never adopted it, unless they snuck it in and quickly got rid of it while I wasn't looking. Canadian football is going thru an era in which the pros are more likely or quicker than the amateurs to adopt, or adapt, US college or HS rules; it's also part of an era of increasing tolerance or preference for divergence between Canadian amateur & pro rules, following an era of convergence culminating in the early 1970s when they published 2 successive annual editions of a single rule book for Canadian football.

2-way scoring on tries is IMO a lamentable digression from what I'm hoping will be the abolition of extra points entirely. As I wrote in this article on the history of the try, there has long been the sense that the try was vestigial, but rather than doing the logical thing and simply doing away with it, the tendency in the past half century has been to dress it up, first by introducing 2-point options (which Canadian football was almost as late to adopt as the NFL), and later by the NCAA's introduction of 2-way scoring. ISTR that recently some league even adopted a 3 point conversion option, snapping the ball from a distance farther back the the usual one. What's next, 2-down tries?

I think you'll find that questions here concerning the administration of the try are disproportionate compared to the amount of the game they occupy. Do penalties carry over to the try, past the try, or from the try? When does a try begin & end? When is the ball dead? What is the value of scores, and are certain scores even possible? They could just as well rename that part or parts of the rule book, "Gotcha".

Maybe the new AAFL can be persuaded to abolish the try.

Robert