NFL for dummies: Legal catch

Published 11:02 am Wednesday, March 23, 2016

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The NFL has announced an ambitious plan to, by the end of this decade, land a regular-season game in China, and return it safely to American soil.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Meanwhile, mankind’s struggle to define a legal “catch” — a key element of the game — continues apace.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">One day the NFL will play a game on the moon … and we’ll all be saying, “They can play a game on the moon and kick a 4-mile field goal, but we still don’t know what constitutes an actual catch.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It’s not rocket science.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But a few months ago the NFL even convened a think tank of various experts — your former players, executives, referees, etc. — to wrestle the subject and, finally, define it once and for all, preferably in English (and now, presumably, translated into Chinese).</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It was either that or ban hi-def television from the premises.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The world waited for the elusive three puffs of white smoke.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">And …</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Well, evidently, they gave up.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The official word at the NFL owners’ meetings was that they didn’t change anything, per se, at least not any rules or definitions thereof.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The league decreed that the “catch” rule, originally written in 1938 with some sort of amendment added in 1942, was working just fine.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The NFL has decided that we, the viewing public, are the big problem here.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">We’re dummies.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It’s “we” who don’t know a football catch from a catcher’s mitt.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">So the league’s new strategy with the new-age problem is to better educate us.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Well, good luck with that.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The problem is that most of us already know a “catch” when we see it — and we spend a lot of time throwing inanimate objects and small house pets at the television during the average game.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">We may not can write a lawyered-up legal definition of it, but we know a catch when we see it.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Pretty simple, really.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It just depends on the rooting or — worse — betting interest.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">If it’s “our” team doing the “catching” or “intercepting” then it’s obviously a legal catch ?— go straight to “SportsCenter’s” highlights.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">If it’s “your” team in question, then all due technicalities should kick in, even if pulled out of thin air and defying all logic, for justice to prevail and set up third-and-10.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The NFL can’t be so simple-minded. It has to come up with a one-size-fits-all.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">And then educate us, apparently using common-core tactics.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">If a Baylor basketball player can explain in layman’s terms to a media dimwit how it was that Yale outrebounded his Bears, this should be child’s play.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But it’s not.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The form</span><span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">ula goes something like “control, two feet, plus time,” and goes on to basically explain that while the ground can’t cause a fumble, it can cause an incompletion.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The three main elements are:</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">1. Secures CONTROL of the ball in his hands or arms prior to the ball touching the ground; and</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">2. Touches the ground inbounds with BOTH FEET or with any part of his body other than his hands; and</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">3. Maintains control of the ball after (the firs</span><span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">t two) have been fulfilled, until he has clearly become a runner.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Which if fine, if it was really that simple.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Sometimes the legal definition seems to be that a player must catch the ball with two hands, display it to the crowd (without taunting) and then swallow it, salted and peppered, to meet the exacting definition.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Other times — usually with your point spread on the line —it seems “close enough” if it whizzed by his ear.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">What they seem to be saying is, ‘Trust us.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">All we know is that at least once per weekend — clearer definitions or better education aside — the entire populace will be up in arms, sometimes downright flabbergasted, over the latest illogical translation (and an explanation that digs the hole deeper toward China).</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Maybe they should go back to college.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">No, there’s no need to switch to the college rule of needing only one (1) foot inbounds for a legal catch.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">For all we know that might only complicate things further.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But the college game doesn’t seem to have this problem.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Oh, for sure, the officials will make mistakes, blow calls.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Your team can still get jobbed in the process, usually when you’re playing Alabama. But at least it’s just human error, not one of those “What-in-tarnation-was-that?” moments.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The college game doesn’t turn it into a great philosophical debate (shouting match) over some long-lost hidden amendment that explains everything.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">You move on and blame it on the SEC offices being in Birmingham.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">You never see the absurdity of the Detroit Lions’ Calvin Johnson last year, who made a clear catch and politely placed the ball in the end zone, then got nailed for “not completing the act.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">So I’m not sure the NFL did itself any good in blaming us for not understanding its rules.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Just for good faith, it could made some adjustment, if nothing else than reassure us it is working on the problem.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Shoot for the moon.</span>

<span class="R~sep~AZaphdingbatdot7pt">l</span>

<span style="font-weight: bold;" class="R~sep~ACopyEditors~sep~endnote">Scooter Hobbs</span> <span class="R~sep~ACopyEditors~sep~endnote">covers LSU</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyEditors~sep~endnote">athletics. Email him at</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyEditors~sep~endnote">shobbs@americanpress.com</span>