The era of weird and obtuse football rules.
 

Does it seem like we've had a lot of bizarre technical calls in recent times? Off the top of my head, I can recall:

1. The whole blocked punt thing last night that showed that a team can get a first down without the ball ever crossing the first-down mark and without a penalty or giving up possession.

2. We had the Vincent Jackson thing a couple of weeks ago where a player can take a live ball and willingly toss it onto the ground, but if it goes forward, then it's a forward pass and therefore not a fumble.

3. We had the situation with Darren Sproles of the Chargers early this year or late last year where he muffed a punt and the other team recovered, only to be penalized because, even if the returner completely loses control of the ball, the other team still has to wait around to see if he can regain control before it hits the ground.

Are there others? It seems like I've seen more, but if they don't involve the Chiefs I tend to forget them.

(It's probably just a coincidence that all these involve the Chargers and ended up to their advantage, and I'm not being facetious.)

What's up with this? Are we seeing situations that have never, ever occurred before? Or are we seeing situations now where football referees are much "better" at reading rules according to the letter of the law?

I would say they're reading the letter of the rule to the expense of the spirit of the game, but I also realize that ambiguity is also a bad thing. What say ye about this?

Oh, and I forgot the ruling where it's okay to hit Trent Green in the head during a slide, but it's not okay to do it for other quarterbacks (except maybe Charlie Frye).

We hadda nuther weird call in Oakland yesterday. Raider TE catches a long pass deep in Rams territory & spikes the ball in celebration. It bounces up & contacts a Rams player. 15 yards for taunting. I guess you can spike the ball unless it touches an opposing player afterwards.... in that case its a personal foul.

That rule of having to have a cover sheet for the TPS reports still boggles my mind.

I posted the following (about the blocked punt) in another thread but it fits here too:

"I think they should change the rule so that the ball has to travel at least 10 yards before it can be live by being touched. Such a rule would have rewarded us for the good play and penalized therm for the poor one, instead of the other way around.

But once they adjust the rule like that, watch for us to have our punt blocked and not get the benefit of the current rule. It always seems to go against us and for the other team. In fact, except for the wierd ending in Cleveland a few years ago, I don't recall an obscure rule ever going in favor of the Chiefs."

I didn't see that one, UD, but wasn't there another bizarre penalty against the Raiders in a recent game? I was wracking my brain trying to remember.

I think referees are intimidated by Marty since he's always on the competition committee and supposedly has a scholar's knowledge of the rules...

He probably pulled the jedi-mind trick a few times this year.

Either way - his luck is about to run out in approximately 4 weeks....

The following play relates to #2 above:

Colquitt throwing the ball forward shovel-pass style and it's ruled a fumble.

Seems like every time they play the Chiefs.

If the touch is the ruling, then any time anyone first blocks the punt, the ball is live and if the kicking team recovers, they should get the first down. The first contact the receiving team makes is on the block...

And Trent Green slid into a diving lineman. He should have known better. The lineman was giving himself up, much like Bart Simpson windmilling, closing his eyes, and walking forward, if you get hit, it's your fault. (That is sarcasm, so please don't take it seriously).

Yeah... we recovered a fumbled kickoff at a critical point, but were flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct because one of our players got pushed out of bounds and "didn't make a strong enough effort" to get back in bounds quickly. Didn't look much different than any other kickoff on the replay. They took away our fumble recovery & penalized us 15 yards.

To me, that one stands out because of the Vincent Jackson play. You can argue that Colquitt fumbled because his arm wasn't going forward enough or whatnot, like a QB tuck rule play. But I don't see how you then turn around and say that Jackson was throwing a forward pass.

Colquitt CLEARLY was attempting to pass. Jackson CLEARLY wasn't attempting to pass. The disparity in the calls is stupid.

I don't think this would work. If it's not a live ball, you could not have blocked punts returned for touchdowns anymore. Just turning it into a dead ball seems to take all the excitement that follows what happens after the blocked punt.

Yep.

That happened in the Giants game yesterday too - but what he did was blatant. He ran like 25 yards out of bounds down the sideline.