Rules questions

[Rich]

Originally Posted by mbcrowder

Not sure what your motivation is for making this difficult. I'm not going to get into what it should be - because frankly it's fine the way it is and this happens so rarely.

I don't know what "either option is a penalty" means.

The PENALTY is "kick out of bounds". All 3 (or 2) options are enforcement options. Two of those 3 are not distance penalties. This is truly simple.

OK, let's be technical. The FOUL is "free kick out of bounds". The PENALTY is one of the three choices, although a case could be made that taking the kick at the inbounds spot is really the receiving team declining the penalty. It's not listed that way, so let's say it's 3 choices.

Edited to add: I've always been taught (and this is backed up in the Redding guides and in NFHS case 6.1.8H) that if you can't enforce the distance penalty (25 yards in NFHS football), the option cannot be given. Period.