Iron Bowl: Joint Possession/Simultaneous Catch

[bisonlj]

There are many in NCAA who believe there is no such thing as a simultaneous catch. One of the players caught it first, and it's up to the judgment of the official to determine which one did.

But by rule everything Pereira said is true. If they did announce simultaneous possession and the defensive player came down first, then it should have been an interception.

[Robert Goodman]

Something else interesting is NCAA 4-1-3l. The ball is dead, the players not being allowed to wrestle it away from each other, nor to advance it.

Here's a good one: opponents catch the ball, and the first to touch the ground does so out of bounds. Is the ball dead, no possession, or does it remain in play for the opponent to possibly gain possession of by touching ground in bounds? 4-2-3a says in part: "A ball not in player possession...is out of bounds when it touches the ground, a player, a game official or anything else that is out of bounds,..." In the case I pose, we have a ball not in player possession that's already touching a player when that player touches the ground; is that supposed to count as "when it touches", or not? That is, does "it touches" refer to an event or to a condition? It'd be clear if it said "touching" or "is touching" or "in contact with", etc.

[Robert Goodman]

Originally Posted by bisonlj

There are many in NCAA who believe there is no such thing as a simultaneous catch.

There's rules support for that, because catch & recovery are defined in terms of control of the ball, and how can someone be said to have control unless it's exclusive? The argument against that would be the argument against superfluity, i.e. that the rules wouldn't have all the verbiage about simultaneous catch or recovery if it didn't exist.