DPI enforcement spot
 

A88 is out for a pass
B25 interferes with A88
A88 catches the pass and carries the ball in for a TD

Enforced how??

Declined so the points stay on the board

or

Can they accept get the result of the play and have enforced on either the PAT of kickoff???

Touchdown stands. A has choice of having 15 yard DPI penalty enforced on the try or successding kickoff. Obviously the automatic first down part does not apply here.

Canadian Ruling
 

CANADIAN RULING:

DPI is not a major foul nor an additive foul. There is no option to keep the play as it stands and to enforce yardage on the convert or ensuing (or created) kick-off. Instead, the Referee will auto-decline the penalty to accept the score.

Short and sweet. god if only they were all that straight forward :)

Right. Ordinarily, DPI is previous spot enforcement, and A would have to decline the penalty in order to take the result of the play.

But during a scoring play, 8-2-2 applies:

So, if A88 scores, the DPI yardage can be enforced on the try or on the kickoff... BUT, if A88 was tackled at the 5 yard line instead of scoring, A has to decline the penalty in order to have the play stand?

That feels rather inconsistent to me.

If they want the yardage gained on the play, yes, they will have to decline the penalty.

JtheUmp, yea I know, and there are many things in the NF rule book that don't make a lot of sense to me. But, its either do our best to play by the rules or just make it up as we go...which may be what some officiails may too often do ;-)

The basic penalty principle the game is built on is simply a choice of accepting the results of a play or accepting a penalty, for whatever foul was committed, and replaying the down. Over time there have been exceptions to that basic principle for very specific situations, but they are based on specific circumstances.

Advancing the ball 99.5 yards, and scoring nothing because you ran out of downs, when going that extra 0.5 yards would provide all of 6 points might seem inconsistent - but that's the game.

When it, "ain't broke, it won't get fixed".

So what specific circumstance would this rule be based upon? I can understand enforcing succeeding spot fouls and dead-ball fouls on the try and/or kickoff, but I can't wrap my head around the logic of enforcing previous-spot fouls this way.

True, and that inconsistency or inequity was introduced recently. Before that, the penalty would've had to be declined for the TD to count too.

But that inequity would disappear in the other direction if they went to spot-of-foul enforcement for the DPI with no exception for fouls in the end zone. I'm trying to remember when NCAA first adopted previous spot enforcement for DPI; they re-adopted it in the 1980s following Fed's influence, but I think Fed inherited NCAA's previous previous spot enforcement rule, so I'm guessing it goes back to the 1930s. This is one of the rules (enforcement spot for DPI) that tends to go back & forth over generations in NCAA, but Fed has stuck with one. The NFL I believe inherited their DPI enforcement spot from NCAA just before NCAA made the change, and then they stuck with it too. The WFL had it as a previous spot enforcement unless it was ruled a deliberate foul.

However, NCAA's & NFL's exception to spot-of-foul for DPI in the end zone went back a long way too. When Fed first deliberated formulating their own rules, consideration was given to awarding a TD for DPI in the end zone, regardless of whether it was an intentional foul.

Robert

The specific circumstance regarding this situation is ALL loose ball fouls, with some general exceptions, are enforced from the previous spot. Several years back, the concept of PSK was introduced to NFHS rules. Priot to that, ALL fouls committed during the loose ball (of a kick) were previous spot enforcement (decline or replay the down after penalty enforcement).

PSK was added to deal with the perceived inequity of the loose ball enforcement negating the fact that the defense had done it's job of forcing the offense to punt and causing the down to be repeated, in addition to the yardage penalty, was excessive. This was a unique adjustment limited to specific circumstances and requirements.

The NFHS penalty for DPI is 15 yards, from the previous spot rather than the spot of the foul, which is different than other levels, and is consistent enforcement with other loose ball fouls.

And it was only in the 1970s that the NFL (in this case leading the way for the other American codes) adopted a similar enforcement that kept team A/K from turning a defensive holding foul (which was fairly common considering the more restrictive rules then regarding use of the hands and the fact that they'd be setting up a runback) that occurred during the loose ball into an automatic first down for themselves. When you realize that since about 1930 a scrimmage kick that ended on R's side of the neutral zone has been "R's ball first", it was pretty weird that K could get possession of the loose ball back because of R's foul during that interval. A rule that made sense during the era of onside kicks -- because fouls could prevent K from legitimately recovering and retaining the ball, in a way analogous to pass interference -- survived for many decades in the various codes after the rationale for it had changed.

IIRC, that was when NFL officials started carrying bean bags.

Robert