Basic Spot for a Loose Ball Play.

[Robert Goodman]

Originally Posted by whitehat

For many years this is one of those I wish the NF would change to match the college rule. Seems very unfair the way it is currently written, but we don't write them we just enforce them.

This is one of the many cases where Fed has kept a provision long after NCAA & NFL changed it (in the 1970s for NFL, I think same decade though later in NCAA). The reason it looks unfair is because of the treatment of incomplete forward passes where no penalty applies. If you thought about it in terms of a completed forward pass, however, it wouldn't look as unfair if you compared a basic spot well beyond the spot of the foul thus produced vs. one produced by a running play. It also doesn't look unfair if you thought the foul prevented the would-be passer from being tackled for a loss, or possibly even having the ball stolen.

One could easily argue that in the case of an incomplete forward pass, there should be no penalty at all for illegal use of hands, if you similarly don't consider the possibility of a tackle for a loss.