Reddings guide illegal participation

[ajmc]

Originally Posted by BktBallRef

It's different than basketball. In basketball, your status is the same as where you last touched the floor. So a player who is OOB remains OOB until he touches inbounds and is not touching OOB.

In football, a player who is not touching something OOB other than another player is inbounds.

The interpretation, that a player who has already established himself as being OOB can continue to affect a play by simply jumping into the air is ridiculous. The sensible and logical way to deal with this is simply to consider him OOB (whether he's on the ground or over it) which would simply make the ball dead when he touched it.

To suggest that a player who would catch a ball, while touching the ground OOB is somehow different than someone who has touched the ground OOB and subsequently jumps in the air is way to hard to explain and keep a straight face.

A player is inbounds until he goes OOB, and remains OOB until he comes back inbounds.