Rules review video: Holding up a snap for subs, intentional grounding on a spike, and taunting after a first down

2024 Media Video #3

National coordinator of football officials Steve Shaw posted his weekly video breaking down rules and interpretations from Week 2 of the college football season.

Per Shaw, the newly implemented technologies discussed last week are still going strong. Through Week 2, there are 0.21 targeting fouls enforced per game. While this is higher than the end of season average last year (0.16), it is actually down from the 0.22 targeting fouls per game from week 2 of last year.

• Touchback on a kickoff. During a kickoff, the ball went untouched and bounced at the 1-inch line, still in the field of play. The receiving team alertly caught the ball off of that bounce and started to run, not taking any chances with where the next bounce would land. By rule, if an untouched kick lands in any part of the end zone, even after a few bounces, the ball is declared dead and it’s a touchback.
• Offensive pass interference. On a 1st & goal throw, the receiver makes a catch and makes his way into the end zone; however, a flag was thrown for offensive pass interference because his teammate set an illegal pick during the route. After discussion, the flag was picked up because the receiver caught the ball behind the line of scrimmage, and there cannot be offensive or defensive pass interference on a pass thrown behind the neutral zone.
• Taunting. After a big throw downfield, the quarterback clearly taunts the opposing team’s bench as he runs by. A flag is immediately thrown for unsportsmanlike conduct, which is a dead-ball foul enforced 15 yards from the end of the play. It’s still 1st & 10.
• Substitution mechanics. A run play results in the runner going out of bounds into his own bench area. Because it can be nearly impossible to tell if the offense made a substitution or not when this happens, the officials treat the situation like a substitution. The mechanic is that the center judge — in 8-official mechanics, otherwise it’s the umpire — hovers over the ball to prevent the snap and give the defense a chance to substitute. The offense chose to ignore the official holding up the snap and snapped the ball anyway. For a first offense, this is just a dead ball with no penalty. If it were to happen again, there would be a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct foul enforced on the offense.
• Touchback on a muffed punt. On 4th down, the offense punts it away to a receiver who muffs the kick. A member of the kicking team has the ball deflect off of him and it rolls into the end zone where the receiving team recovers the kick. Even though the kick was muffed, the ball’s forward motion into the endzone was still from the kick and the kicking team’s player, so it was correctly ruled a touchback.
• Intentional grounding on a spike. With the clock running and the offense out of timeouts, they elected to spike the ball. The quarterback did not receive the ball cleanly on the snap and it hit the ground on its way to the QB, who spiked it once he received the ball. By rule, this is intentional grounding because the ball was spiked after it had already hit the ground. This came with a 10 second runoff because the game was inside of 2 minutes in the half.