Today's Tidbit... Eligible Receivers and the Sideline

Sometimes, a picture is worth 1,000 words, but today's picture, including the title of this post, is worth only 594.

Football has many rules enacted for reasons that no longer apply, yet we continue following them as long as they make sense under today's conditions. An example of such a situation is the roughing the punter penalty, enacted for reasons that had nothing to do with ensuring the punter's safety.

Another example of this type is the 1924 rule, which made eligible receivers ineligible when they stepped out of bounds during play. The reasoning behind that rule seems straightforward, but there were some critical differences in the rules back then, including the field's lack of hash marks.

Before hash marks arrived in 1933, when a player was tackled on the field of play, the next play started from that spot, regardless of how near or far they were to the sideline.

Teams regularly started plays along the sidelines, so they had sideline formations and plays in their repertoires. In most cases, teams ran their plays away from the sideline, but the second and third pictures below show teams breaking the tendency and running the ball right along the sideline.

(1901 Cornell yearbook)