Using flip boards to call no huddle-Legal?

[Robert Goodman]

Originally Posted by Forksref

...and no stripes on the socks and the wings "punching in" the TD and 4-man or 3-man crews and down boxes that were really boxes with a number on each of the 4 sides. I remember the goal posts on the GL for NFL but not FED ball. Maybe I am not old enough.

No matter how old, you wouldn't remember goals on the goal line in Fed. NCAA had already moved the goals to the end line when Fed inherited them and started writing their own rules from that base. However, there was an early proposal in Fed to rename the goal line something like "score line" because the goals weren't on that line. And to rename "field of play" "scrimmage zone" because you could still play in the end zones but not scrimmage from there.

Rugby has kept the wording "field of play" too but eventually (much later than the Fed football proposal) adopted "playing area" to mean field of play + in-goal areas. "Field of play" goes way back to a time when the area beyond the goal lines was treated similarly to that beyond the side lines, and the ball belonged to whichever side touched it down there -- which action I guess they didn't count as "play".

Robert

Originally Posted by Robert Goodman

No matter how old, you wouldn't remember goals on the goal line in Fed. NCAA had already moved the goals to the end line when Fed inherited them and started writing their own rules from that base. However, there was an early proposal in Fed to rename the goal line something like "score line" because the goals weren't on that line. And to rename "field of play" "scrimmage zone" because you could still play in the end zones but not scrimmage from there.

Rugby has kept the wording "field of play" too but eventually (much later than the Fed football proposal) adopted "playing area" to mean field of play + in-goal areas. "Field of play" goes way back to a time when the area beyond the goal lines was treated similarly to that beyond the side lines, and the ball belonged to whichever side touched it down there -- which action I guess they didn't count as "play".

Robert

FED may have moved the goal posts to the end line when they started writing the rules. I have an old book, that has some pictures from some high school games from the early years in Nebraska, and in a couple of those pictures, you can see the goal posts were clearly on the goal line.

[Robert Goodman]

Originally Posted by Ref Ump Welsch

FED may have moved the goal posts to the end line when they started writing the rules. I have an old book, that has some pictures from some high school games from the early years in Nebraska, and in a couple of those pictures, you can see the goal posts were clearly on the goal line.

But I'm pretty sure the Federation did not even exist at that time. If they existed, they didn't write their own football rules. Fed is as its name implies an organization that came about by the federation of existing state high school athletic ***'ns. Some of those HS ***'ns may have had their own rules for football (NCAA's with amendments), but in general everybody was using NCAA's rules for football when Fed organized. And although the NCAA was organized by & for colleges, before Fed existed NCAA had become conscious of the use of its rules by high schools and had someone reporting to their football rules committee with the interest of HS in mind.

I'd be interested in finding out whether any state HS athletic ***'ns or any local HS leagues either kept the goals on the goal lines for some number of seasons after NCAA moved them or made their positioning optional. After NCAA widened the goals to 23'4", many HS played, theoretically by Fed rules, on fields shared with colleges, and so were technically nonregulation, until about 15 yrs. later Fed allowed those goals as regulation in such circumstances. A few years later Fed made the wider goals the regulation ones. And then NCAA went and narrowed them again! I don't know if Fed followed a similar path on the re-narrowing to 18'6".

Robert