FOOTBALL RULES CHANGES BRING INTERESTING COMMENT

The Football Rules Committee, under the chairmanship of E. K. Hall, Dartmouth '92, made at its recent meeting in New York several changes in the rules governing the great college game. It was voted that the goal posts be placed ten yards behind their present situation on the goal lines, that a fumbled punt be no longer a "loose" ball which may be retrieved and converted into a touchdown, and that lateral or backward passes be placed upon the same footing as the forward pass.

Concerning the ruling on the lateral and backward passes Paul Neumann, sports editor of the New York Evening Post comments as follows:

Some complaints are heard that the game is reverting to the rugby code from which it was originally taken.

The opposite is the case. The liberal manner in which the offensive side is treated in lateral passing would astound any and every rugbyite.

In the rugby game a fumbled lateral pass is anybody's ball. It can be scooped up by the defending side and carried over for try, as they call our touchdown, it may be kicked, just as the "loose" ball could in the American game more than a score of years ago; in fact any old time may be done with it in rugby.

The protection afforded the offensive side in this matter of lateral passing appears, after careful scrutiny of the rules committee's regulation, to be a factor toward still more open football.

The quality of common sense characterizing Chairman E. K. Hall of the rules committee is, like Portia's justice, not strained.

In fact, Mr. Hall, in the many years he has headed or been a member of the rules committee, has displayed so keen a knowledge of what both player and spectator want in football that the lateral pass rule can safely be left to work itself out to everybody's satisfaction.

Briefly analyzed, it amounts to this: If a lateral pass is fumbled or missed it still belongs to the offensive side and counts a down, unless it is fumbled or missed on the last down, when it goes to the defending side at the point where it hits the ground.

That this wonderfully effective . and spectacular pass will need special plays and plans goes without saying.

. That it will ever reach the lengths to which it is utilized by New Zealand and Welsh rugby teams is an impossibility in view of the much narrower field on which our game is played.

The rugby field is seventy-five yards wide. The rugby backfield comprises seven men, two being quarterbacks, four halfbacks and one fullback. Hence the game is practically played by a series of backfield movements in which the entire backfield handles the ball until the carrier is downed or gets rid of the ball by kicking or going out of bounds.

I selected New Zealand and Welsh teams as particular exponents of this style of play because Scottish and English teams have mostly depended on the weight of their lines to shove their opponents back, and the Irish teams on "kick and follow" methods.

During the eleven years that rugby was the collegiate game in California the style of play was our own one-man-carrier method far more than team work in passing. As a result our Western teams gave exhibitions of rugby that were scarcely exihilerating, and the ball was being scrimmaged, and therefore practically out of sight most of the game.

Protection against interception of the lateral pass will give our coaches many a bad evening before next season opens and the lighter football teams will turn some predictions upside down when they meet heavier opponents.

That the huddle was not altogether abolished need cause no surprise when it is considered that on the rules committee is that stalwart supporter of the midfield confab, Bill Roper. Doubtless Mr. Roper has the support of Tad Jones in opposing its abolition altogether at this stage.

That it will have to go eventually there is little room for doubt.

Altogether the rules committee seems to have done wisely and well.

The American football public stands indebted to the men comprising it.

Especially is this true of Mr. Hall who has found time, despite the arduous duties as an executive of one of our greatest corporations, to keep at its peak the great college game, to which he himself was a shining credit in the days when many of us, who now write about it, were in prep school.

Grantland Rice, noted sports-editor of the New York Herald-Tribune quotes Dartmouth's head coach Jess Hawley as commenting upon the new rules as follows:

Jess Hawley, Dartmouth's famous coach,

sees a few flares of excitement when the kick- off takes place next fall. "If the lateral pass can be used after the kick-off," says Hawley, "the defense charging down the field will have a busy time stopping a long run back or preventing a touchdown. For with the penalty removed from a lateral pass, the side accepting the kick-off can take a chance and you then need a full field defense. You can no longer concentrate on the man who catches the kick-off. You will have to guard the entire field, and this isn't easy to do."