Penn State at Illinois, End of 1st Half: a Legal Tackle?

The Game Room
1

At the end of the 1st half in today’s Penn State at Illinois game, Penn State returned a goal line interception 100 yards for an apparent touchdown but the runner was tackled at the 1 yard line. Instant replay review confirmed the tackle, but I’m pretty sure that the tackler had just stepped out of bounds before making the tackle. Without that tackler, the runner would have scored. No other Illinois players were close enough to make a play, and the ball carrier was not stumbling.

Was this a legal tackle? Is there an NCAA rule about players coming back onto the field of play to make a play? I believe there’s an NFL rule for that; I’m not sure about NCAA.

2

On an offensive play, there’s a rule that a receiver loses his eligibility when he leaves the field of play; so, if he’s the first player to touch a forward pass, it’s incomplete, even if he’d come back inbounds before the ball got to him. (There’s an exception for the situation where he was forced out of bounds by a defensive player; as long as he gets back inbounds at his first opportunity, he’s still an eligible receiver.)

None of this applies to defensive players, as far as I can see.