Touchback?
 

With the night off, I went to see my old high school play. Here's what happens: Punt returner sees ball is going to land around the 10, so he gets out of the way to let it roll. It rolls near the goal line, but doesn't stop until a player from K downs it at the 1 yardline after having slid into the endzone. The K player was completely in the endzone, laying down, with his arm outstretched the stop the ball from coming in.

I'm convinced this should be called a touchback, but the back judge marked it at the 1 and the crew didn't discuss it.

I'm not crazy, am I?

I'm not qualified to judge your mental health, but you're mistaken about this case. If the ball didn't cross the goal line, then it's not a touchback.

In HS the position of the player is irrelevant. That might be an NFL rule.

Odd that your username looks like prozac. :P

I tried to find validation in the rule and case books last night, but I was struggling to do so. The case book refers to a play where K jumps and secures it at the 1 but lands in the end zone -- it calls that a touchback -- but that's a different situation as the ball's not legally secured until the player lands.

You're probably right that I've let what I see in the NFL color my outlook on the play.

Start with good ol' rule 2: 2-24-2 Definition of when a kick ends.

Then the touchback: 8-5-3-a.1

Neither of these mention the position of a player.

The crew didn't discuss it because they nailed the call. If the coach was wondering about it, I would have made sure that we discussed it with him so he understood how that is the rule for NF and NCAA.

It is. For I don't know how long, the NFL rule was like everyone else's (and why not? All the USAn codes derived from NCAA's) but had a clause that said in case of doubt as to whether the ball was across the plane of the goal line, a touchback was to be ruled if the player touching the ball touched ground in the end zone. However, the officials had read the "in case of doubt" part out of it, and were ruling exclusively on that basis, even where it was absolutely clear where the ball was. Eventually the NFL codified the rule that way. So in a sense in these cases in the NFL, the goal line is a line, not a plane. The ball can be over the end zone in the air, but if the player of K touching it last touched in the field of play, the touching of the ball is ignored for purposes of determining it to be a touchback, while if the player of K last touched the end zone, the ball can be in the field of play and it's still a touchback.

The NFL has a kind of momentum rule here as well. Instead of the ball's being immediately dead when K possesses it, if it's inside R's 5 (or maybe 10, I forget) yard line the dead ball is held in abeyance if K recovers while moving toward R's goal line and can still produce a touchback due to K's touching ground in the end zone, until the player in possession stops moving toward the end zone.

Robert

P.S.: There was a time in NCAA (probably in other USAn codes too) when first touching by K inside R's 10 yard line produced a touchback.