Change of Possession, untimed down??
 

A's ball with 10 seconds left in the game. B22 intercepts A's pass at midfield and is returning it when time expires. B22 hands the ball forward to B33 at the 10 yardline of A. B33 then scores a TD.

Now, we know that we have a foul for illegal forward handing. And we know the TD won't count. Question is, do we have an untimed down? I think its a good question and I'm unsure what to think here. Yes, the foul by B has a loss of down aspect to it. However, that LOD aspect won't be in effect here, because we had a change of possession. So, do we ignore the LOD aspect of the foul for the purposes of deciding whether B gets an untimed down or not?

After much deliberation within myself, I think that we have no untimed down here.
3-3-4B is the rule I'm looking at. It says... fouls that SPECIFY a loss of down. It doesn't say that the LOD aspect has to be enforced, it just says fouls that SPECIFY a LOD.

Would be very interested to see what everyone thinks about this.

I think you might be reading a little too much into the verbiage. As we know, "Loss of Down" actually means a loss of the right to repeat the down.

The Change of Possession eliminates any possibility of "B" repeating the down if the penalty is accepted, so "B" cannot suffer being deprived of repeating the down when the penalty is accepted, so that provision of the penatly is not applicable.

Mike/Jason, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think under NCAA rules, you would play an untimed down if team A accepted the penalty. The LOD only applies to Team A and only if before change of possession.

Canadian Ruling
 

CANADIAN RULING:

At the point of the handout, a flag should be thrown for an offside pass. The penalty is that the ball goes back to the flag. But since this offside pass is not a foul, by definition, then the period is not extended for one more play. Result: no TD, game over.

What is the definition, in Fed please, of a forward handoff?

REPLY: Fed Definition (NF 2-19-2): Forward handing occurs when the runner releases the ball when the entire ball is beyond the yard line where the runner is positioned.

I understand your position. But still I have to ask myself this question. Illegal forward handing is a FOUL. And 3-3-4b states ...fouls that SPECIFY loss of down.... So, does the foul for illegal forward handing SPECIFY loss of down? Absolutely it does. It just so happens that we don't get to enforce it, when there is a change of possession. Just because we don't enforce that particular portion of the penalty doesn't mean that its not there.

And, I decided to dig a little bit further. And what I found makes me even more confident on this. If you turn to page 97 of the rulebook, there is a summary there of all penalties. Take a look at #'s 15,16 and 17. #15 is for illegal forward handing and it says (also loss of down), with no mention of A or B. However, #16 and #17 are both Illegal forward pass, but they thought enough of it to seperate them to identify that when B does it its not a LOD. So, if I had worded my play differently, and put a illegal forward pass in there, that was caught for a TD after a change of possession, then I guess this penalty summary would support your arguement. But not the case with illegal forward handing.

Very interesting this subject.

So Doc,
If B throws an IFP after a CoP, enforce the penalty (no score) with an untimed down for B (becoming the new A). Yes? (I'm working Fed. on this and welcome NCAA.)

Well, its tough, but yeah I guess so. The penalty summary on page 97 would tend to support that way of thinking. I still go back to this... an illegal forward pass does specify a LOD. We just don't enforce it after a change of possession, there's no way to do so. I think the rules were changed a couple years ago to prevent a team from commiting an intentional foul in order to get an untimed down. But there are plenty of things they could do intentionally on that interception return that don't include LOD. Like clipping, holding, etc. But still, if I'm respecting the way the penalty summary is written (and I think we should), then I'd have to say there is a difference between illegal forward handing and illegal forward passes after a change of possession.

REPLY: Eventually DrMoore, you got to the right ruling. The period is over. And you subsequently did point out a flaw in the IFP penalty. An IFP by B after a change of possession does not specify loss of down and therfore would require an untimed down. But this is thoroughly inconsistent with the intent of the 3.3 rule calling for the period to end (without an untimed down) if the penalty includes a loss of down provision. The actual play that caused that rule to be accepted a few years back was one where on the final play in regulation, A ran down near B's goal line and threw a forward pass to a teammate for a TD. B was obviously forced to accept the penalty which resulted in an untimed down in which A kicked a FG and won the game. That same situation could just as easily happen after a COP.

And by the way, while illegally handing the ball forward in NCAA also includes LOD if by Team A (but not by Team B after a COP), NCAA does not have the exception to the rule which eliminates an untimed down if the foul includes LOD.

Allow me to share a definition I heard a long time ago, "Bureaucracy: When written rules come in direct conflict with common sense, and you choose to enforce the rule (or some unique or obscure interpretation of it), rather than reason the objective."

Heh. The funny thing is that if you go into the early 20th Century, offside pass was the only foul as that word was then used in Canadian football.

But Fed doesn't define "where the runner is positioned" in relation to a particular part of the body, and if you're releasing a ball, some part of the runner's body must be touching it and hence at the same yard line.

They could clear that up if they wrote, "...entire ball is beyond all parts of the body of the player releasing it other than upper and lower extremities." Or, "...beyond the head, neck, and trunk of the player releasing it." I think that's what they really mean. Or they could adopt NCAA's definition and rely on an intuitive sense of where the players are in relation to each other.

Robert

There isn't now, but there could be.

As soon as I saw the OP, I knew that Goodman would be making those points, including the 0th down. I should have made them first to look smart. :p

Can you expand on this?

I made this same point when I was picked up by the Canadian NCAA equivalent.

I also made the point that since a handoff is all about ball position in Cdn ball (as everything is), the point of origin and point of termination of a handoff pass are always the same, due to the physical nature of releasing a ball when another has shared control with you. If the two points are always the same, there never really is a forward handoff, therefore never an illegal handoff. The definition needs to be cleaned up.

handing the ball forward
 

Practically nothing to expand on. It's just the way they chose to wrote things for a while. 1925 & thereabouts the word "foul" was not being used in Canadian football generally for violations of the rules, but specifically to mean what would now be subsumed in offside pass. I've no idea why; rules makers get on these terminology kicks from time to time.

Redefining this in terms of ball position instead of position of the players (which was originally judged by foot position) simplified things generally, but left this one meaningless.

You can try to "do the right thing" by figuring out what gives an unfair advantage and ruling that way, but that's a form of divination that I sometimes engage in but can't claim to be expert at. Since it doesn't directly advance the ball, I could say that all handoff passes are fair.

Or you could just fall back on the old rules by which the violation is on the part of the player who by body position is offside when playing the ball, if a thrown forward pass to that player would not have been legal under the circumstances.

Last I looked the NFL rules were "interesting" on this. The motion used by the player handing the ball off determined whether it was a forward pass. But where/when does that motion start & end? If the player extends at the shoulders & elbows in front of him with the ball a distance, but then at the last split second pulls it back a little before the exchange occurs, do you judge it just by that last pull-back? It's as bad as or worse than the "tuck" rule!

Robert