Fumble

[gandalf]

Does anyone have any thoughts on the play last night when UCLA fumbled, and the refs ruled that they recovered, but when the pile was uncovered, a Utah player had the ball? I was at the stadium and it didn’t seem to make sense to any of us at the time.

[Tony (admin)]

Yeah I was wondering too, that and the wierd punt where the UCLA guy touched the ball after we stopped the punt and we recovered. 

[Larry B]

On the punt, I think (correct me if I’m wrong) the ball is dead after we touch it. So it was dead before it was touched by UCLA.

The fumble, I thought we came up with it. I’d like an explanation too.

[UtesRule]

That is correct on the punt rule. If the UCLA player had touched it first, then it’s a live ball.

[Dallas]

The fumble recovered by UCLA was a bit hard to see on replay but it did look like a UCLA lineman was first to fall on it. Hard to see anything after that.

[2008 National Champ]

I’m hoping that the punt comes up on the weekly Rule video. There used to be an exception to the rule that once the kicking team touched it, the play was dead. Only happened very rarely, but there were a couple of times a year where you would see highlights of the ball hitting the defender and deflecting away where the receiving team would grab it in the open field and get a good return or TD out of it. So once the receiving team touched the ball, it was live again.

[EagleMountainUte]

Utah player who touched it didn’t expect it to check up like that so he over ran it and touched it. Who knows about fumble. Pac12 refs are idiots.

[Distantute]

Ucla clearly fell on the fumble and had possession

[dwainegf]

The rule on the punt is that the punt team touched the ball, when that happens the worst thing that can happen to the receiving team is that they get the ball where the kick team touched it. That includes picking up the ball and later fumbling it. The kick team touching the ball is called illegal touching. Not sure why this is the rule, however, it is.

Illegal Touching

[PNW Ute]

The rule is that if the kicking team touches the ball first, it is “illegal touching.” After that if the receiving team tries to pick it up and return it, after the play they can choose to either take the result of the play after they tried to pick it up or take possession of the ball where it was “illegally touched.”

So there’s basically no downside to a receiving player trying to pick it up and return it after the kicking team has touched it. Worst case scenario for them is that they keep possession of the ball where the kicking team touched it. Coaching high school, we used to teach our players on the punt team that if they were downing the punt, they needed to grab hold of it until the ref blew his whistle. Otherwise it was fair game for the returner to try something crazy.

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