[NU Sports] Potential Football Rules Changes

[Jonathan Michael Hawkins]

> 3. Likewise, listen up NFL:  Zap the "breaking the plane" rule.  If we 
> needed yet more evidence of how dumb that rule is, think no further than 
> Roethlisberger's phantom touchdown in the Super Bowl, just the last of 
> thousands of such examples.  Once more, the game halted while the refs 
> looked at the replays again and again and again.  If Big Ben had to have 
> actually gotten a knee into the endzone, the call was easy.  No TD. 
> Yes, it contradicts the position-of-the-ball-when-the-knee-touches rule. 
> Use it out in the field, but make the ball carrier actually enter the 
> endzone for a score.  Inconsistent?  I don't care.

Rugby has a wonderful way of doing this, that I wish were in American 
Football: it's a touchdown when you get into the end zone and actually, 
you know, touch the ball down onto the turf.  In Rugby you have to apply 
some positive pressure (downwards) on the ball into the turf before you 
can get a try.  This is where the word touchdown comes from, as far as I 
can tell.  Why can't we just go back to this?  I hate the "I stretched my 
arms out real far and got a nanometer of the ball across the plane" crap. 
That's no touchdown, it's a powderpuff league thing.

-- 
Jonathan Michael Hawkins
<http://www.jomiha.com>