Kick play

[Robert Goodman]

Originally Posted by maven

True. 'A kick' is ambiguous between the name of an act and a live-ball status.

Illegal kicks are kicks in the first sense but not the second. If Robert intended the second sense, then he was right to say that an illegal kick is not a 'kick': can't score, is not a TB when crossing R's GL, etc.

Well see, what they wound up doing for the latter purpose was breaking out everything into free & scrimmage kicks, then defining those individually as "legal kicks". I think their former language, and NCAA's still, is easier to follow.

Fed & NCAA used to have substantive differences between illegal kicks and illegal kicking. They don't any longer, do they? Seems Fed could save some words by dropping the word "legal", in which case the various types of kick, as well as the status of the ball, and all the substantive provisions regarding balls kicked legally & illegally would remain the same, unless I'm missing something. An illegal kick would result from kicking the ball in any way other than "a kick", because all the kicks are now defined according to the circumstances under which they may be done legally.