The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-02-09
YOST PLEASED WITH
 FOOTBALL RULES No Material Change Is Expect ed in Style of Play REST PERIOD CHANGED YOst Discusses the Forward Pass and Says He Is Glad That Penalty Is
 Not Too Heavy in Case
 of Fouls
REST PERIOD CHANGED

Nashville, February S.-(Special.) )-Coaeh Fielding Yost of Michigan is we'll pleased with the action of the football rules com mittee which met last Friday in New York. He states that he does not antici- pate any material change in the modern style of play and is not only pleased with the general result but with the additional fact that a committee has been selected to codify the rules This last feature is something, he declares, that has long been needed
 Taking up first the matter of reducing. the time of the first and third rest pe- riods from three to two minutes, he states.
 "Of course, 1t may be possible that breaking the game up this way interferes to some extent with the continuity of play. However, that is not what we are trying to get at We want to keep the men as fresh as possible, and when they are allowed to walk around for two or three minutes, then change goals, the fellows feel a whole lot more like going into it. I was glad to see that the rule permitting players to be resubstituted was not cut out. Personally, I would like to see a rule incorporated which would allow player to re-enter the game once at any time''
 On the subject of the forward pass, Yost went on to say: T am glad that the penalty does not begin at the spot of the down and not from where the ball was thrown, because 1t encourages the pass to be worked oftener When the ball was carried back to the point from where it was thrown, 1t discouraged the play while the new ruling has the op- posite effect. As for the other part of the rule which allows a man to be tackled as soon as he catches the ball, I think that is exactly right. In the first place, it is hard for the player and the officials to tell how many steps man has taken, in fact, it Is almost impossible to tell, and furthermore a player coming down on the receiver of a pass can't just stop and wait until the man has started"
 When asked if he did not think that the committee should have eliminated the 20-yard zone far as the pass was concerned, he answered NO. don't think that this rule has much ef- feet one way or another. You see, a pass is rarely made longer than 20 yards past the scrimmage line. The reason is this: If you want to make long pass you have to give your end time to get down under it. This necesstates a delay in the back field, during which the ball Is relayed back from 10 to 15 yards behind the line. This then makes the entire pass about 45 yards, which is much longer than the average On the other hand, Il the pass is made sooner 1t cannot be made longer than 20 yards past the line of scrimmage, because your end can't get down under 1t. We have tried this out up at Ann Arbor, and even with clear field it Is hard for a man to get down far enough to receive a pass that goes further than 20 yards ahead of the scrim mage line. I believe that if the rule were made to extend the zone to g yards that 1t would not be broken once in 1000. You see, it's hard to make an accurate pass longer than 45 yards, and then lot of times a good deal of the length of the pass is absorbed in the angle across the field''
 'I see that there Is another rule which declares that when forward pass has been legally made, but fumbled and al- lowed to touch the ground, that the pass is ruled incomplete continued Mir. Yost. Now, this rule doesn't make any es- sential change in the play at all.'
 Another one of the new rules is re- gardng a foul following a first or second down committed on or behind the goal line by player in possession of the ball. If such foul follows third down, the referee shall declare a touchdown for the offended side. Concerning this rule. MT. Yost said This is good rule. Of course, this rule. giving the defending side a touchdown, will surely occur. because when a team is forced to start the play from behind the goal line, they are not going to take any chances. They almost invariably punt out. At the most they would only try one play from this posi- ton, and this would still give them an- other chance to punt out and not have a touchdown declared on them, even If foul were committed