Free Kick After Fair Catch w/no time left?

[Mark T. DeNucci, Sr.]

I am a former futbol official so forgive me for asking a stupid question:

A number of years ago I was told that only under NFHS and NFL rules: If the Receiving team makes a fair catch of a punt, it could take a free kick (line up like a kick off to start the game) from the spot where the fair catch was made and either a) punt the ball, or b) kick the ball, that was held by another player, like for a field goal, and if in (b) the kick goes through the uprights it is three points for the kicking team.

Please remember this was many many years ago. So if one of the bald old geezers (I am a BOG on the Basketball Forum) of the Football Forum could give a history lesson, I would appreciate it very much. Thanks.

MTD, Sr.

[Robert Goodman]

I still have only a bald spot, but I've been working on it for over a decade. My bald spot is, however, football related. It was first mentioned by my father when I visited him in 1995, "You're going bald up here", but I didn't believe him, and couldn't see the thinning of the hair via mirrors. Several months later I spent a day in the sun at Mem. Stadium in Balto. watching a preliminary 10-a-side and then an international Rugby League game (USA vs. Canada), followed by the Stallions (CFL Colts) vs. Toronto Argonauts, twi-night. On the drive back north (to friends in Morristown NJ) it was a little chilly and I put on the heat. I then noticed the crown of my head throbbing when the hot air hit it. It took a while before I realized I was sunburned there for the 1st time in my life.

Oh, you want the history of the free kick from the fair catch, not my bald spot? Well, that's one of the earliest rules in football, extending back before there was American or Canadian football, and probably before rugby football was even known by that name. In various types of football in the British Isles, handling the ball was more or less prohibited, but an exception was for making or attempting to catch an opponent's (or sometimes a teammate's) kick that hadn't yet touched the ground (or in some cases had bounced no more than once). A successful catch resulted in play's being stopped pending the ball's being put back into play by a kick from the mark of the catch.

The various forms of football derived from these games took various paths with the fair catch. Most de-emphasized it. Australian Rules exalted it, to where it's not only the most generous in the conditions under which it's awarded (I'm using the word "awarded" here to indicate any right by consequence of rules, not just via penalties) but also having the most important cx to scoring. Soccer abolished the fair catch, leaving it with the greatest restrictions on handling of all major forms of football.

Canadian football abolished the fair catch in the 1940s IIRC, Rugby League in the late 1960s. Rugby Union took the free kick from a fair catch out of the possibility of scoring directly in 1975.

NCAA in 1950 -- in one of the few cases a Canadian football development may have influenced USAn football (I don't know if it actually did) -- abolished the fair catch. In 1951, NCAA restored the fair catch, but without the free kick option, leaving it the odd one in this regard in the major American codes, so that may be the bit of history you were looking for. The option to scrimmage instead of taking the free kick existed at least as far back as the 1860s in rugby football and in all games derived from it.

There's one game I know of (two if you count its own derivative, speed-a-way) that seems to have at least semi-independently reinvented a form of the old rules by which handling the ball directly off the ground was forbidden, but allowed from an aerial ball, which could be produced by an opponent's or teammate's kick: speedball. But you don't get anything much resembling a free kick for your trouble, just the right to handle the ball as it remains in play.

In games that extend a period of play for a free kick from a fair catch, there's one fairly simple way to deny it to the opponents: kick the ball out of bounds. To my knowledge, no such game has ever had a rule awarding a fair catch in such a circumstance, although it might seem they should. IIRC in NFL rules the ball's not even dead on crossing the sideline in the air even when it's obvious it'll come down out of bounds, so those extra seconds needed for it to hit the ground out of bounds can be useful in running out the clock while denying a period-extending free kick. And if even such a kick would be too risky, there's always a long high throw out of bounds, which, not being for the purpose of either avoiding loss of yardage or conserving time, is legal.

So, AFAICT, when a half or game is extended for a free kick from a fair catch, it means their opponents goofed. An exception would be a penalty-awarded fair catch where KCI is followed by enough of a live ball interval to run out the clock that otherwise would've had time. The period would've been extended anyway, but the free kick might be a good choice, yet the foul may not have been a stupid one but just a misjudgement by a player trying to prevent a runback.

Robert in the Bronx