Super Bowl Law

Scott Dodson at Prawfsblawg wonders what procedural and legal goals or values were served by requiring the teams to run the last snap with :01 left in the game (besides the benefit of giving the media one more thing for which to criticize Bill Belichick). Why shouldn't the Patriots have been permitted, in essence, to concede the game one second early?

In comments to Scott's post, I wrote a shorter version of the following:

There could be a line-drawing problem with any concession rule. At what point can a team concede when there exists some chance the trailing team could win, however miraculous it would be? How many seconds can a team concede? A similar situation occurred in Super Bowl XXXII (what happened to the Roman numerals last night, btw?) between Green Bay and Denver. With Denver up 7, Green Bay threw an incompletion on fourth down. There was more than :01 left there, but not much more; I think Elway only had to take one or at most two knees. So was a concession appropriate there? And is it more than timing? Could the 2007 Dolphins concede when down 14 midway through the 4th quarter on the road to the 2007 Patriots? They had about the same chance of winning that game as the Patriots did with :01 last night.

Prospective rules are notoriously bad at anticipating practical distinctions that may come up. Rulemakers thus err to the far end of making everyone play every last play. I am not sure I would call it "sportsmanship" as much as encouraging teams to do everything necessary to win in the name of the integrity of the game. It even relates somewhat to concerns about bad teams "tanking" for draft position, something that has been discussed before.

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