Colorado tried to punt a kickoff vs. UCLA, which is not legal at all

Colorado returned a fumble for a touchdown against UCLA to cut the Bruins’ lead to 28-23, but there was a penalty for sideline interference on the return that pushed the ensuing kickoff back from the 35 to the 20.

The Buffaloes came out for that kickoff like this:

Via Pac-12 Networks

Yup, that’s the punter ready to boot the ball to UCLA, just as he would after a safety. One problem: the rulebook explicitly states that’s not legal.

A kickoff is a free kick that starts each half and follows each try or field goal (Exception: In extra periods) It must be a place kick or a drop kick.

In this case, a “drop kick” is when you drop the ball off the ground and kick it, like Doug Flutie did that one time. Compare to the wording on safety kicks:

A free kick after a safety may be a punt, drop kick or place kick.

So yeah, you can’t do a punt on a kickoff. The refs didn’t even let them try. They sprinted out to stop this from happening:

They told the Colorado sideline that this was only allowed on safeties:

And the kick team sprinted on. I can’t actually find a penalty in the NCAA rulebook for a kickoff attempted as a punt. My guess is it would’ve been a five-yard penalty for an illegal kick.

At first, you wonder why. You can’t kick a punt as far as a place kick. It’s just more difficult to kick a long way when you’re holding the ball than it is when you run up to the ball on the ground.

But there is a reason here: Colorado figured that since they were kicking from the 20, they’d try to limit UCLA’s return with a high-arcing punt. That’s why teams sometimes choose to take safety free kicks like punts even though they’re given the option of placekicking. But they should’ve known that this was still a kickoff and not a free kick.

In case you’re wondering why punts are illegal on kickoffs, my guess is that it’s because that would make onside punts a thing, and as the Detroit Lions showed a few years ago, those are easier to convert.