i mean, you watch football, right? you KNOW how hard it is to force a turnover? a ball rolling out of bounds is silly, at best. it is NOT a means to change a game. PLEASE, pretend like you actually watch football..

I was watching football on Super Sunday in 1993, when Don Beebe did the exact same thing to Leon Lett that Ben Watson did to Champ Bailey. Beebe got the touchback. Mind you, that wouldn't really have changed the personality of the shellacking the Cowboys put on the Bills that day, but I remember that game only because of that play. It was an incredible fucking play. Ben Watson's hustle from way back and across the field was an incredible fucking play. So give the kid a touchback, and kindly spare me the "don't you watch football?" crap.

Joe, let me ask you why a team scores points whenever they successfully advance the ball to the opposing team's end zone. Because the end zone is the special piece of magical ground that teams defend. Good things happen when you get into the defenders' end zone, and bad things happen if the defenders punch you back into your own end zone.

So are you asking me to extrapolate from the Platonic central principles of football to justify the exception about having to actually recover a fumble to gain the ball? I suspect that it's not possible, because it has the scent of a rule that was glommed on top of the basic rules. Didn't someone else give the actual reason for the rule? To prevent the kind of stretch-for-the-endzone desperation plays like Thomas Jones tried? Doesn't that answer your original question of why the rule exists?

I can accept the touchback rule. I am at peace with the touchback rule. Even if it's an anomaly within the original framework of the game. Every rule involving the quarterback and half the rules involving receivers are anomalous.

If that touchback rule was a big surprise to you, you didn't remember the Beebe/Lett play I cited earlier.

DON'T YOU PEOPLE WATCH FOOTBALL?!?!?!?!??!!!!!1!!!

I've seen dozens of safeties. I've seen blocked passes caught by the QB who threw it. I've seen a drop-kick FG (thanks to Doug Flutie a few weeks ago.) But I've never seen the fumble in the endzone rule.

And, really, if your big example of the rule is 12 years old, doesn't that sound obscure to you?

There seems to be some sentiment that the fumble out of the endzone for a touchback is not that rare at all.

And yes, my big example is 12 years old, because that was one of the most memorable plays in NFL history. You are confusing "big" example with "only" example. Just because the only precedent that springs to mind is from the days of the K-Gun Offense, doesn't mean that it's the only example.

King, thanks for commenting on something that has been gnawing at my liver for a while. For the last few years, I have watched the two major sports sites I visit (ESPN and SI) try and put up these sad little sports-entertainment (why would you want to invoke pro wrestling?) conjunction features. ESPN had "Page 3" which seemed mostly to be about asking athletes questions about their favorite entertainers and asking entertainers about their favorite athletes. Sometimes they would get athlete and entertainer together to play a video game or something. Sports Illustrated had some ridiculously short-lived regular item that was supposed to keep us filled in whenever an athlete dated an entertainer. They folded after someone realized that no one cares about Lance Armstrong and Sheryl Crow's love life. Both features died a quiet death. And yet they keep trying! Like the right mixture of courtside Eva Longoria pictures and breathless speculative stories of near-run-ins between Matt Leinart and Jessica Simpson is going to finally catch fire.

Kind of went off there, but again, thanks for leveling some well-deserved mockery at ESPN.

The comparison never occurred to me, Official G, but that's a good comparison. And it reminds me of something Lewis Black said about MTV, not too long ago... "MTV is to music as KFC is to chicken!" I don't think we're there yet with ESPN, but there is a clear trend.

And having said all that, I am still on the verge of signing up for their premium website crap because they are holding Ralph Wiley's old columns hostage. The bastards.

These days, most of what ESPN puts out is unwatchable. I stopped watching SportsCenter years ago when inane catchphrases outnumbered witty catchphrases which outnumbered highlights anyway. Also, have you seen the anchors in hi-def?

In the words of Stu Scott, "Someone's playa hatin', dawg!"

Yes, it was quite a shock to me when I first saw ESPN on HD and noticed that Scott has a false or lazy eye.

I am going to miss NFL Primetime on ESPN, though. I guess I don't find Berman as irritating as most people do. I loved his chemistry with Tom Jackson, and I loved the insightful analysis.

Out of curiosity, where does everybody go for their sports news and analysis?

I read most of the columnists on Sports Illustrated, as well as most of the columnists on ESPN. I particularly like Doctor Z from SI and Bill Simmons and Jason Whitlock from ESPN Page 2. Simmons spends a lot of time mining the intersection of sports and pop culture, but I find it entertaining when he does it. Then of course there's King here. I don't read much sportswriting outside of football season, except for the flurry of activity around the combine, draft, preseason, etc.

No one has been as consistently enjoyable as Ralph Wiley was, though. He managed seamlessly combine "street" with good, trenchant football analysis.