Immaculate Reception.

[Robert Goodman]

Originally Posted by Steven Tyler

I like the old NFL films when they show Harley (?) of the 49'ers throwing the elbow to the head making a tackle, and knocking the runner unconsciene. You also had to physically have the ball carrier on the ground for them to be considered down at one point also.

No, you didn't have to do that, but I know what you mean. The old tackle rule in both rugby and American football was that the ball carrier had to be "so held" so as either to be taken to the ground that way (i.e. something other than hands or feet touching the ground) or have his progress stopped. The difference with the present rule is the "held" condition on being brought to the ground, in that merely knocking the ballcarrier down wasn't sufficient; the hold had to be maintained all the way to the ground. If the ballcarrier was already on the ground without contact, you still had to establish contact sufficient to hold him down, so some hits that look like unnecessary roughness now really weren't under the rules of that time -- of course, some were.

All the major codes still allow the "standing" tackle, so the only difference is in the part related to the grounded runner. NCAA was first to change that, in the 1930s (so Fed inherited it), to not requiring any contact with an opponent. (Then they had to make exceptions for place kick holding and then fake place kick holding.) NFL never went that far (except insofar as the voluntary "quarterback flop"), but in the 1950s changed it to require contact that resulted in the ballcarrier's going down. At some point, I don't know when, that started being practically interpreted as the runner's being down even if he just contacted an opponent on the runner's way down, i.e. no causal requirement, but they didn't actually change the rules to reflect that for decades -- until the 1990s, I think. NFL is like that frequently, carrying things in their rule book for a long time after their officiating practice changes.

Rugby Union changed their rule on what a tackle was too a few times in the latter half of the 20th Century. The ground tackle eventually came back to what it'd been before, while the provision for a standing tackle can be seen in today's rule regarding when a maul becomes dead.