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- 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, and from which, if additional penalties were not enforced, the offending team would gain an advantage. 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 (that is, order a forfeit loss to the offending team and a walkover win for the wronged team), 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. (en)
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