Touchback or not? (NCAA)

[Welpe]

Originally Posted by Fan10

I must be missing something here, but I was always under the impression that a ball that breaks the plane is a touchback.

True in Federation, not true in NCAA.

In NCAA, a kick is a touchback when it touches the ground in the endzone and is untouched by Team B (Team R) before touching the ground.

If the ball is touched before hitting the ground in the endzone, it is a live ball and free to recover.

I know that in NCAA, you can't do the play similar to the out of bounds in basketball where a kicking team player jumps and bats it back into the field. When that happens, it's ruled a TB since the ball broke the plane.

Are you talking about a punt where the kicking team is trying to keep it from going into the endzone? In NCAA, the position of the ball relative to where it is touched is key. The actual position of the player (as long as he is in bounds) has no bearing to what is ruled.

In this situation, if the ball is touched by the kicking team in the endzone, the kicking team is guilty of illegal touching. Since the ball is in the endzone, it will be placed at the B-20. Same result as a touchback but it is not a touchback.

[Robert Goodman]

So if you're officiating NCAA and a kick comes to you in the end zone that you can't duck out of the way of, the moral is, you'd better catch it!