Officially Speaking: Playing (fair) catch
Editor's Note: Officially Speaking with Steve Hall is a feature that allows readers to ask questions about high school football rules, and runs weekly throughout the season. Hall has been a New Hampshire high school official since 1989 and has officiated nearly 300 NHIAA regular-season varsity games. He has also officiated more than 25 playoff games, and worked his 11th championship game last year (Pinkerton at Nashua South). Hall, who is a member of the New Hampshire Football Officials' Association Board of Directors, has been the NHFOA rules interpreter since 2001, and is also the New Hampshire representative on the National Federation of High Schools rules committee. Questions, which may be edited for clarity, can be submitted to rbrown@nhfootballreport.com. Please include your hometown.
Question: I have never seen this happen and hope I never will, but what would the ruling be on this play? There's an interception near the defensive team's goal line and the player who intercepted the pass has a clear path to the end zone. There's no one around him, so he stops at the opposing team's 40-yard line and makes a taunting gesture to the other team. He then continues to the end zone. Touchdown?
-- Amherst
would be enforced on the try which would then be from the 18-yard line. Over the last few years, there has been considerable discussion among members of the national rules committee to have this type of foul enforced
from the spot of the foul (in which case, the touchdown would not stand). The difficulty in changing the rules to accommodate that type of enforcement has been in drafting language that works in all potential situations. Since no one has been able to do so thus far, the rules continue to specify that this is an unsportsmanlike conduct foul penalized from the succeeding spot.
Question: A player signals for a fair catch on a punt but is nowhere near the ball when it hits the ground. Can another player pick up the ball and advance it, or even get tackled for a loss of yardage?
-- Concord
Answer: I'm not sure what you mean by getting tackled for a loss of yardage. After a fair catch by any member of the receiving team, the ball becomes dead as soon as it is possessed by either the receiving team or the kicking team. Therefore, another player could not recover the punt and return it, because the ball is whistled dead as soon as it is recovered. Also, a player couldn't get tackled, because the covering official will whistle the ball dead as soon as the recovering player gains possession. If the player was tackled after the whistle blew, it would be a dead ball personal foul. However, judgment would be used in making such a call. For example, the covering official would determine whether the defender was able to see the fair-catch signal. If not, then the covering official
would have to determine whether the defender had committed to his charge prior to the whistle sounding. Regarding your question on loss of yardage, if the ball bounced toward the receiving team's goal line, yardage would be "lost" since the ball would become dead when it was recovered, and the spot of the recovery would be closer to the receiving team's goal line that the spot where the fair catch would have been made if the player giving the fair catch signal had caught it. If you are asking about a player recovering the ball, then retreating toward his goal line and thereafter getting tackled, that could not happen because, as discussed above, the
ball would become dead as soon as it was recovered.
Question: I have a question about the penalty that comes with pass interference. I'm not sure if it's 10 or 15 yards, but does the full penalty apply even if the interference occured closer than 10 (or 15, whichever the case may be) yards to the line of scrimmage? What if there is pass interference but the receiver makes the catch anyway and gains 6 yards before running out of bounds? In this case the full play played out, including the run after catch. If the full penalty applies in this case can you explain the reasoning?
-- Manchester
Answer: Based on the example that you gave, I'm assuming that you mean defensive pass interference rather than offensive pass interference. Defensive pass interference is a foul during a loose ball play. The basic
spot of enforcement for fouls during loose ball plays is the previous spot (i.e., the spot where the ball was snapped). Defensive pass interference carries a 15-yard penalty from the previous spot, plus an automatic first
down. The spot of a foul by the defense is not relevant to enforcement. Therefore, if the pass was complete and the team gained more than 15 yards on the play (and also reached the line to gain), it's likely that they would refuse the penalty and take the results of the play. The only exception to the 15-yard previous spot enforcement for defensive pass interference is if the snap occurred inside the defensive team's 30-yard line. No penalty can move the ball more than half of the distance from the spot of enforcement to the goal line. For example, if the ball was snapped from the 24-yard line, the penalty for defensive pass interference would result in a first and ten from the 12-yard line.
