Two-tier touching

On the way to my game last Sunday, I had a random thought. If an ineligible player is the first to touch a forward pass, it's a five yard penalty. However, if an originally eligible receiver makes themselves ineligible by stepping out of bounds and then touches the forward pass, it's a loss of down.

"Why are the penalties different?", I asked myself. Then it dawned on me - the first foul (the ineligible player touching the pass) nearly always occurs because someone somewhere has messed the play up (for example, a receiver lining up on the line when he should be off it, or the QB coming under pressure and throwing the ball anywhere he can) - it's a technical foul, just like a false start or an illegal motion. On the other hand, the second foul could occur due to the receiver deliberately going out of bounds to avoid a block, and I assume this is what happened before the current rule was in place - it's more of a dishonest foul hence the slightly stricter penalty.

Inadvertent waving your arms around a bit

One rather major talking point from the weekend happened at the Conference USA Championship game between UCF and Tulsa.

From a coaching point of view, this is a perfect example of knowing that a member of the kicking team simply touching the ball on a kick play doesn't kill the play (it must be picked up) - the UCF players make that mistake and the Tulsa receiver nips in behind them, picks the ball up and runs it in for a touchdown.

From a refereeing standpoint however, things are a lot more complicated. On the replays, the back judge can be seen signalling for a timeout -  Rule 4-1-2-a states:

A live ball becomes a dead ball as provided in the rules, or when an official sounds his whistle (even though inadvertently), or otherwise signals the ball dead.

So strictly speaking, this TD shouldn't have stood - by rule the ball is dead while it is loose.

We discussed this in our pre-game on Sunday and the question was asked - What would we do if this happened in one of our games? Keep quiet and hope no-one else saw the signal, or be honest by blowing the play dead and eating a huge portion of humble pie? Naturally, we chose the second option, and thankfully never had to put it into practice (phew!).

So what should've been the outcome of this play? First of all, we have illegal touching by a member of the kicking team, so the receiving team would have the option of taking the ball at that spot. What's more, the illegal touching is actually an illegal bat (you can't bat a loose ball forwards in the field of play), so the end result would be a ten yard penalty from the spot of the foul and a first down to Tulsa.