Football Needs a Zeroth Down There may be plenty of unequitable penalties in North American football in some play situations, but there's a certain kind of play situation wherein the penalty is always a gyp to the team with the ball. I refer to live ball fouls in situations where the next play was going to be a first down anyway and the penalty involves neither loss of down nor automatic first down. Example: Change of possession of the ball occurs during a play, and as play goes on during the runback/return, a foul involving some kind of illegal block (illegal use of hands, clipping, tripping, blocking below the waist) by either team is detected. If the penalty is declined, the team ending up with the ball will have first down coming. However, if the penalty is enforced, then the team ending up with the ball will have... first down anyway! If that doesn't sound funny, consider all other play siuations in which a penalty causes a down to be repeated. The team with the option gets to choose whether to take the distance and have the down again, or to accept the down as it ended, with play moving on to the next down. That can be a difficult choice especially when the defense has the option. But in the example above, the defense has its cake and eats it too by accepting the distance penalty. It functions as if it were a loss of down, because there's no down numbered 0. So there should be a zeroth down. The instant the ball changes team possession while remaining live it becomes zeroth down. Ordinarily when the ball becomes dead, the down advances as usual, so it becomes first down and the line-to-gain is set, i.e. first-and-ten. But if a penalty is enforced relative to play during that interval when it was zeroth down, and the penalty calls for the down to be repeated, the next scrimmage is zeroth down. No line-to-gain is set until the down advances to first. Another example: Team A advances the ball beyond the line-to-gain and a foul is then detected before the ball becomes dead or changes team possession. Here again, if the penalty is against team B, having the next down as first cheats team A. They should get the distance of the penalty and a play on zeroth down. It shouldn't be hard to add a plate reading 0 to the down signpost. All that remains is to add a referee's signal for zeroth down. Probably make an O with thumb and forefinger. And if Canadian football ever goes back to arm instead of hand signals for the down numbers, maybe a Roman/fascist salute with arm straight out in front. Robert M. Goodman Dec. 2000