@CFB_Rules we have an emergency situation in SMU-Navy.
SMU committed a holding penalty during a punt return after the change of possession. Because of the inadvertent whistle, the penalty is marked off from the previous line of scrimmage and it's an automatic first down for Navy.
That feels like absolutely the wrong ruling.
A lot going on here. I can’t hear the whistle on the broadcast version of the film which makes it hard to comment intelligently.
Short version: they were technically right but I would have tried to handle it differently. The relevant rules:
The ball always belongs to a team. A kicked ball belongs to the kicking team until it is recovered or dead by rule.
Holding by the defense is penalized from the previous spot unless it meets the following criteria (abridged)
Foul occurs during a kick that crosses the neutral zone
The ball belongs to the defense at the end of the play.
When the inadvertent whistle happens the ball is dead immediately. And when the ball became dead it belonged to the kicking team, so the second criteria above is not met. Replay can fix a lot of these situations if there is a reviewable aspect ( immediate recovery etc.)
I’d probably ignore the rule and treat the ball as if it had been possessed by the receiving team. Would be receiving team ball -10 yards, basically ignoring (or steamrolling) the IW. It’s happened quite a few times in some really high profile games and basically nobody has ever noticed, and I doubt they would here