In American football, an unfair act is a foul that can be called when a player or team commits a flagrant and obviously illegal act that has a major impact on the game. All of the major American football codes include some form of unfair act rule. In all cases, the definition is deliberately vague, giving the officials great latitude in defining such an act and enforcing penalties for such acts. At the high school level, officials are free to assess any penalty they see fit, up to and including forfeiture of the game. The National Federation of State High School Associations, however, also includes the general rule that all acts are legal unless otherwise explicitly stated; thus, the unfair act rule is only invoked in cases when specific rules have clearly been broken, but the penalty for the foul does not cancel the advantage gained by committing the foul. The National Football League defines two types of unfair acts, a palpably unfair act and an extraordinarily unfair act. The latter is for acts so extraordinary that the NFL Commissioner can levy fines, require the offending team to surrender draft picks, and suspend players. Under Rule 17 of the NFL rulebook, the commissioner also has the authority to overturn a game result, order the game to be fully replayed, or to discard the results of the game from the unfair act onward and resume play from immediately before that point. To date, no commissioner has ever used his authority to alter a game result.
Examples
The 1954 Cotton Bowl Classic featured a notorious use of the rule. Rice University's Dicky Moegle broke free for an apparent touchdown run, but Alabama'sTommy Lewis entered the field and tackled Moegle. This could have been ruled illegal participation, for which the penalty then was 5 yards. However, the officials declared a palpably unfair act and credited the touchdown anyway. Modern college and NFL officials are explicitly permitted to award a touchdown under such circumstances. The high school rulebook specifies one situation to be penalized as an unfair act: when the defensive team makes repeated fouls near its own goal line, for which the regular penalty is trivial.
Deliberate fouls in the NFL
The NFL's rule on deliberate fouls is open-ended but covers only "successive or repeated fouls to prevent a score." It would only be a palpably unfair act for the defense to commit deliberate fouls, preferring the certainty of a small penalty over the uncertainty of a score attempt, if the defense did so again after an official's warning. On November 6, 2016, near the end of the first half, the San Francisco 49ers deliberately held pass receivers, forcing the New Orleans Saints to settle for a short field goal. The NFL instructed its officials that this would be a palpably unfair act subject to a 15-yard penalty if repeated. On November 27, 2016, the Baltimore Ravens took a safety, conceding 2 points of their 7-point lead. They committed numerous holding fouls to ensure that they could exhaust the final 11 seconds of the game. This was not a palpably unfair act because it did not recur. The Snowplow Game on December 12, 1982, had only one score, a field goal during a snowstorm by the hosting New England Patriots. Before the score, the grounds crew plowed a special path for the placekicker to make the kick easier. The game officials allowed this act, but Miami Dolphins coach Don Shula protested to Commissioner Pete Rozelle that it constituted an unfair act and thus could be overturned. Rozelle, although he agreed the act was unfair and could in theory be punished, refused on principle to ever overturn a game result. On a key drive late in the 2019NFC Championship Game, Nickell Robey-Coleman of the Los Angeles Rams made a helmet-to-helmet hit that constituted pass interference. The officials called neither foul, and the Rams ultimately beat the New Orleans Saints in overtime. A lawsuit from Saints fans sought to force the league to use its unfair act clause and replay at least a portion of the game. The league opposed this on financial grounds, claiming it would have to postpone the Super Bowl to do so, and ultimately the court ruled in the league's favor, ruling that fans had no standing to sue over rules enforcement. Robey-Coleman was later fined for the hit. Beginning in the 2017 NFL season, deliberately committing fouls to manipulate the game clock was classified as unsportsmanlike conduct. In the first test of the rule, on October 21, 2019, it went unenforced, as the New England Patriots committed repeated dead-ball penalties and ran out the clock without being penalized. This was subsequently repeated by the Tennessee Titans that same season in their wild card playoff win over the New England Patriots. Former New England Patriot player and Tennessee Titan head coach, Mike Vrabel, had his team commit various penalties to run over a minute off the clock in the final quarter of the game.
