OK, then what would you say to restoring the requirement for a touchdown that the ball be touched down? Then a player reaching the ball out (preparatory to touching it down) would not be home free when the ball breaks the plane.

@@goodmaro That would completely eliminate the great catches at the corners of the end zone- the ones where the receiver makes a leaping catch and then drags his toes before going out of bounds. There is no way to touch the ball to the ground in a situation like that. The game would become less exciting and less interesting

@@69UM24OSU12Yes, indeed it would, as well as eliminating some touchdowns where a runner dives across the goal line at a corner, whether reaching the ball out or not. But I don't see why you want a runner extending arms with the ball to incur a greater risk than a receiver catching the ball at the back or side of the end zone. How about a runner reaching the ball out past the line-to-gain stick at the sideline (or the sideline that doesn't have the stick)? If you fumble the ball out of bounds there, the result is nowhere near as bad as at the goal line.

@@goodmaro i would prefer all lost fumbles that leave the field of play be granted to the defense. If you want to fix this rule for consistency's sake, you have to do so in the defenses favor. fumbles are either a mistake by the offense or a great strip by the defense. In either case the offense should have to foot the bill. The touchback fumble (nor the safety fumble) is not the broken rule, The rest of the fumble rule is what's broken to me. I found data from 2000-2011 and only 6.7% of all fumbles in that timespan went out of bounds (including "aborted snap" fumbles strangely so I imagine those are snaps over the head near ones own endzone, which already have their own rule in place as they are likely safeties, OOB strip sacks also fit this profile. removing these from the equation brings the OOB fumble figure to 5.7% of all fumbles) OOB fumbles occur at the highest rate following completed passes (and fumbles of this variety have the highest rate of being recovered by the defense, unsurprisingly) So its relatively rare and when they do occur, they are likely robbing the defense of what is statistically supposed to be theirs anyway (82% of recovered fumbles of this type are recovered by the defenders). And this rule change has no effect on 95% of fumbles

Thank you! And thanks for the feedback!

But that batting foul is a rare one, not the same as a fumble or muff.

It was a rule that made sense during the periods (long past 1905) when you could gain ground by fumbling the ball forward out of bounds. The ins and outs of the rules related to those occurrences were interesting too. But now that the ball comes back to the spot of the fumble, it makes no sense to have an exception for the end zone.

The rules starting diverging from Canadian football in 1876 when the Intercollegiate Football Association (US) decided to go (almost entirely) with the laws of the Rugby Football Union (England) instead of cobbling together a consensus from rugby as it was being played in various locales in the USA and Canada. Rugby as it had come to North America was not a standardized game because it wasn't even a standardized game in Britain yet. Canadian football didn't even adopt a uniform national rules code until well into the 20th Century. The NFL started developing its own rules in 1932 -- around the same time as the National Federation of State High School Associations starting deliberations on developing their own, which they took several years to do. Remember that even the NCAA had inherited its rules from the pre-existing Football Rules Committee, whose function they then took over. The first changes the NFL made were to reverse a couple: restoring the goals to the goal lines, and requiring the ballcarrier once again be held by an opponent while touching the ground with other than hands and feet to be considered down. (According to John Waldorf's chronology, NCAA's rules committee had just that year adopted a rule making the runner automatically down for so touching the ground, unless he was placing the ball for a kick, so it's not clear the NFL was reversing that or just didn't adopt NCAA's 1932 change.) The championship game played on the non-regulation field in Chicago Stadium due to a snow emergency was said to have been the deciding factor in getting NFL goals moved again to the goal line. The reason the NCAA had given for moving them to the end line was safety -- even though they had been starting to use offset goal supports. If you ask me, offsets were just as if not more effective in moving that rigid obstruction off the field.

It was indeed 1958, and it was because the NCAA rules committee thought the try had become too routinely successful, especially since they'd just widened the goal to 23'4". They changed the spot from the 2 to the 3 yard line but still expected the try for 2 rather than 1 to become routine. David Nelson, secretary of the rules committee at the time, has a good explanation. I'm just sorry not much consideration was given toward eliminating the try entirely. Might as well mention that I visited David Nelson at the University of Delaware in 1980 and talked briefly about the rules.

Sorry.... wrong endzone.

Don't watch much football these days. I get sick when millionaires who play a game tell me and everyone else how ashamed we should be.

True. Fumbling the ball out of bounds is treated like kicking it out of bounds, when the out of bounds spot is in the opposing end zone. Everywhere else, including the end zone of the team whose player produced the loose ball, a fumble is treated like carrying it out of bounds. An interesting "never happens" case is Federation rules, where if you fumble the ball into the opposing end zone and it becomes dead there as a result of all the players leaving it alone while it's come to rest in bounds, it's a touchdown. That is, it's treated the same way as a ball left to roll dead while loose anywhere on the field; if it's a fumble, it goes to the last team in possession. The rule is just there for completeness, because when are all the players on the field going to be so negligent as to leave a fumbled ball loose? Like, "Are we still playing football?"

It came from the determination of the ball's being out of bounds when touching or being touched by a person touching the ground out of bounds. In NCAA rules you can't get away with that infamous NFL tactic; it'd be ruled illegal participation by the player deliberately going out of bounds and then interfering with play in bounds. In rugby if you're standing out of bounds and then reach across the plane of the sideline to touch the ball in bounds, it's not out of bounds unless you actually gain possession of it.

How about a fumble out of bounds in the field of play? Do you want to penalize that 5 yards also? If not, why not?

It's different because when you kick the ball you expect to give it to the other team. If we don't treat a fumble that way in the field of play, why do so in the end zone? I will point out, however, that in rugby (both Union and League), when you fumble the ball forward, you do give it up to the other team. But also when you carry the ball out of bounds. At least that's the case now it wasn't always so.

Then what would you say to the Canadian rule that the ball not be scrimmaged with any part of it inside the 1 yard line?

Even in college rules, the spot for defensive pass interference has gone back and forth. It was previous spot + yards, then spot of the foul, then previous spot + yards again. I keep thinking it went back and forth *twice*, but not sure.

No, I think there are much bigger sports, but it depends how you measure them. I know at least for a long time fishing was the biggest.