Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Touchdown?

We had a little debate while watching MNF last night at the Bdubsmahal.. the gist of it was - when scoring a rushing touchdown, does the football itself need to break the plane of the endzone within the pylons, or does the goal line extend into infinity beyond the pylons, and thus a touchdown can be scored if the ball breaks the plane while out of bounds.. I found a good blog entry that answers:

http://east-coast-bias.blogspot.com/2007/10/plane-of-goal-line.html

2 comments:

  1. I'm still not sure what the real answer is. By the way... this blog gets a quote from the man Ed Hochuli!!!

    Ed Hochuli says:

    Excellent explanation, Jason. You are absolutely correct. The NFL rule was changed this year, so the Warrick Dunn play referenced would no longer be a TD because the ball did not pass over the top of or inside, and no part of the player touched in the end zone. But under the current rule, a player in possession of the ball gets a TD at the goal line pylon by either touching some part of his body in the EZ after the ball has broken the goal line plane extended, or by getting the ball over the top of, or inside, the goal line pylon.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous11:11 AM

    It looks like the old rule was almost in line with what I was saying but the new rule is what everybody else thought.

    I think under the old rule any part of your body had to break the plane in field, but the ball could break it out of field.

    ReplyDelete