"Catchability"?

[Robert Goodman]

Originally Posted by Lintner5

pass interference calls & the judgment involved usually elicit more chatter and because our rules differ from the NFL & NCAA in determining catchability.

Not only that, but, having started with the same rule on pass interference that all 3 of these codes had, Fed seems to want to have no such thing as a catchability philosophy, just by the wording of the rules. When NFL & NCAA adopted an explicity catchability provision, I took that as a mere clarif'n, not a substantive change, because it was always implicit that if a pass couldn't be caught anyway, then contact or faceguarding didn't actually interfere with an opponent's ability to catch the ball. However, Fed's adopting language regarding the ability of a potential receiver to move toward the ball or its path would seem to mean that, yes, they would want a flag thrown 50 yards away because it interferes with the player's ability to move to within 40 yards of the ball's flight!

Canadian football has a target/non-target area differential penalty, the point of which is...what? So that if the pass is caught, a player remote from it is not interfered with during the interval it's in the air so that he's that much closer to being able to throw a block, make a tackle, or receive a lateral pass as the play continues? Or does that rule still apply only to illegal use of the hands in a non-target area? (The USAn rules got broadened in recent decades.)