Decoding Football History: The Catch Rule Through the Ages

One of the most common reoccurring incidents in football is the controversy of a player having a catch.

Did he have one foot in bounds or two feet in bounds?

The rules are different between college and the National Football League, and we explored them today with Timothy Brown of FootballArchaeology.com Tim's got more on this subject in just a moment.

This is the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch, a podcast that covers the anniversaries of American football events throughout history.

Your host, Darren Hayes is podcasting from America, America's North Shore, to bring you the memories of the gridiron one day at a time.

Hello, my football friends.

This is Darren Hayes of pigskindispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal deposit of football history.

And welcome to another edition where we visit with Timothy Brown of FootballArchaeology.com Tim, welcome back to the Pig Pen.

Hey, Darren, good to see you.

And I've got both feet planted.

Ready to have a heck of a tidbit right now.

Well share with you.

Hopefully they're either both inbounds or do maybe you have one on the line?

Well, I don't know if it's college rules, I only need one in line.

One inbounds.

That.

That's true.

That's true.

College, you know, or pro, I need two.

But.

And even in college, if somebody pushes me up or.

No, in the NFL, if somebody pushes me out while I'm in the air, I don't even have to get my feet done.

Yeah, that's true.

True.

So one of the biggest judgment calls in officiating, this is always one in the.

You spend a lot of time on mechanics when you have multiple officials covering a sideline, when you have six and seven man games.

And of course, this is stemming from a tidbit that you wrote recently, Tim called one foot inbounds or two.

So what can you tell us about this aspect of football history and the rules?

Yeah, so, you know, it's kind of a funny thing, I think, you know, I don't think people get all up in arms or up in feet nowadays about this rule, meaning the one or two feet in.

I mean, they know it's a judgment call.

And, you know, typically, probably if the, if there's a question about the, the officials call, most of the time they've got pretty good video evidence to push it one way or the other.

And so I don't think there's a lot of controversial calls about it anymore.

The weird thing was it was just one of those things I'd never really checked into.

And so what surprised me was how long it took to get to clarity on what the standard is, you know, what needs to happen for you to be in bounds.

So, you know, the.

In the.

In, you know, college.

Therefore, it was the same thing as the pro rules until, you know, 32.

But the first thing I found, you know, this is a little bit of a difficult question to get a straight answer to, just because it doesn't.

It kind of doesn't fit exactly in certain rules.

Now it does, but early on, it, it was kind of all over the place.

But the point.

Point is that in the first time that I came across a thing about stepping on or over the side sideline referred to making a fair catch.

So there wasn't, you know, there weren't forward passes initially.

And so it was just kind of one of those things where everybody knew.

Everybody knew what inbounds and out, out of bounds meant, even though it wasn't written down.

You know what I mean?

You know, there's.

It's one of those classic things.

And a lot.

A lot of rules worked like that initially until there's some kind of incident and they say, okay, well, now we gotta document which one it is.

And so I'm gonna mostly talk about the NCAA, at least initially, where.

And then it may have been there before, but that's the first time that I spotted it.

So it's like.

But they didn't.

In the.

In colleges, they never specified this, you know, the foot being on or beyond the sideline.

And then, even then, it was, you know, it was basically at that point, the rule was.

It is also incomplete when a player jumps and catches the pass, but lands on or outside a boundary line.

So at that point, it was, you know, end lines in and sidelines, but it still didn't specify are we talking one foot, two feet?

You know, and so it was based on, you know, their rule basically was you're either inbound if you're not out of bounds, you're inbounds, and you are out of bounds if you have a foot on the.

On the boundary line or outside of it.

Right.

So apparently, even if you just had one foot inbounds so not on the boundary line, then you're good.

But it's just.

They got very specific.

If one foot lands in bonds with the other not contact and the receiver has possession, blah, blah, blah, blah.

You know, say they spell it out, you know, quite precisely.

You know, so, you know, they had said, you know, kind of.

It was similar language, but they, they also had.

The thing about the NFL also specified that if you are carried out of bounds by an opposing player, so you're up in the air, they hit you, and you would have landed in bounds had you not, had it not been for getting hit and carried out by the opponent, then you're considered inbound.

That's a judgment call, right?

College doesn't have that.

You have to physically land one foot inside the boundary line.

And the kind of.

The funny thing was.

And you actually commented on this about the.

As regard or in the tidbit itself, but the, the reason the NFL added the, the issue about having the, the two feet inbounds was they thought it would be.

It was an easier call for the official.

So two feet in bounds was an easier call than one foot in bounds, which is why they went in that direction.

Obviously, the NCAA never didn't agree on that and still hasn't.

And I'm not sure I can make an argument really one way or the other.

You, you're at least a former official, so maybe you have a view on that.

But.

So I know it's just one of those.

It's one of those things that just seems like they should have specified that a long time before they.

And then they took a long time to do it, you know, and I, I couldn't find any.

Like, there's.

It's not uncommon for them to specify.

To better specify a rule due to a, an incident or a couple of incidents.

And I never came across references to that.

They just kind of one day said, you know what, we really ought to clean this thing up, you know, clean up the Spill.

We have a 905.

And they finally did it.

So.

Just, Just a comment.

I think I understand what the NFL saying.

It's easier to officiate because, I mean, sit there and think about it, how many times we're receivers so close to the sidelines, and maybe he has one foot out of bounds, one foot inbounds, you know, but so now you almost have to think, okay, did his foot out of bounds hit before when he's touching the ball before the inbounds?

Went.

Or if it's simultaneous, what do you have?

You're kind of splitting hairs all the time.

It makes it more of a judgment call where the two feet, you know, it's, you know, clearly in bounds, two feet.

And, you know, you take some of that minutia out of it.

But as we see, you know, every Sunday and every Saturday in the fall, there's, you know, even with the instant replay, there's plays that are so close that they slow it down to, you know, milliseconds, and you're still wondering, God, is.

Maybe that's a catch.

And next second you're saying, no, maybe he's out of bounds, you know, no matter what the rule is.

It's amazing how these athletes can do these superhuman things and with their bodies and make calls that close.

Yeah, well, I mean, baseball's the same way.

I watched.

I was watching some of the College World Series, and there was a call at first, and I was like, he was.

He was out.

Oh, no, he was safe.

You know, in the replay, you can see.

Yeah, it's safe.

It was dang close.

But the.

Yeah, the first base up was right.

Was correct.

But I would have disagreed, you know, so, I mean, so, number one, it's just, you know, kind of kudos to all.

All the referees and officials out there.

But, yeah, I mean, the.

The other thing, though, that is, like, back in the time frame that we're talking about, there were fewer officials on the football field.

You know, so these guys.

And, you know, that potentially influenced, you know, the NFL and their decision.

But, you know, they.

They probably only had, like, five.

I've got a chart that tells me how many, you know, ref or officials around the field that, you know each year.

But they probably had five guys on the field that, you know, that would have the referee, the umpire, linesman, assistant linesman, and then a field judge or somebody somewhere out there.

Well, the field judge, now, whatever.

They would have only had one guy deep, so he.

Depending on which sideline the pass was on, you know, there could have been an official there, but if it was on the other side, probably not, you know.

Yeah, it could have been a guy 15 yards back.

Think about it.

Think about, like, the Notre Dame squads, like when Rocky was playing, you know, the round.

The World War I era, there was probably only three officials on the field, and these guys were throwing the ball.

Yeah, it wasn't.

They would have.

They would have four by then.

But.

But I mean.

But even just like, say four, you have no back judge.

That means you have Two wings, a referee and an umpire.

There's nobody downfield for anything that goes more than seven yards.

It's hard to officiate.

You have sideline guys trying to look.

In and think about the guys in 19, 19, 10 and 11 football had a rule that you couldn't throw a forward pass more than 20 yards downfield.

There was no marker out there to designate 20 yards.

You had to do it based on the line of scrimmage.

You're doing it based on making a decision about eligible receivers, few of whom wore any numbers at all.

And none of the numbers they wore made any sense in terms of, you know, tackles are 70s and guards or 60s, none of that system existed.

Well, maybe not on the grass fields, but, you know, there's more lines to look at.

And, and so it makes your.

Your point of reference is a little bit better.

But yeah, it's.

Other than that, you're right.

And probably a lot of these teams, when they didn't have those grid fields, I mean, I've gone on fields where every 10th yard is.

Is marked.

You.

You don't have the five yard increments on grass fields at some of these smaller places.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Amazing, amazing stuff.

And it's amazing how the game has evolved and even how we officiate it to this day.

We have more men in.

We have, you know, technology helping us where these poor suckers 100 years ago were really just, you know, fodder for the coaches to just, you know, take a whooping on them if they even a judgment call, even if they were right, like you said you know, earlier.

Yeah, Well, I mean, the other thing, like, none of them were trained, you know.

Right, right.

They were out there because they had played the game and they studied the rules and they were considered to be, you know, pretty honorable people.

Yeah.

But they hadn't gone through any kind of formal training.

They didn't take quizzes to demonstrate that they knew the rules.

It was just like.

Yeah.

You know, but like, all the coaches would carry the rules in their pocket just to be able to go, hey, Mr.

Right.

You know.

Yeah, amazing stuff.

Well, great story, Tim.

And you, you do this quite often where you'll take a little piece of football history and bring it back to life, you know, a century later in.

In some cases and you do this in your tidbits.

Maybe you could share with us where we can find your tidbits in and read and enjoy them more.

No, I'm not going to do it.

No.

Okay, that's a wrap.

Yeah, it's so it's a substack site or newsletter, so footballarchaeology.com subscribe.

You'll get the email every time that I publish a new article.

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All right.

Well, another evening of fascinating football facts and history, and we really enjoyed it.

And Tim, we'd love to talk to you again next Tuesday about another subject.

Very good.

Look forward to it.

That's all the football history we have today, folks.

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