College football could see a change in its timeout rules this coming season in an effort to stop perceived fake injuries, if the NCAA can secure the proper approval.
The NCAA Football Rules Committee has proposed a major change to the current injury timeout regulations for the 2025 season, the NCAA announced on Friday.
The committee has recommended that if medical personnel enter the field to evaluate a player after the ball has been spotted by officials, that player’s team would be charged a timeout.
If the team has no timeouts remaining, then officials would assess a five-yard penalty.
All potential rule changes in football must be approved by the NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel, which will meet to discuss the proposal on April 16.
The proposed change to injury timeout rules has been introduced in an effort to combat what is considered to be an increasingly concerning issue around players apparently faking injuries to slow the pace of the game or avoid using a timeout.
This isn’t the first time elements within the NCAA have sought to curtail fake injuries in football.
Earlier this month, it was reported that the NCAA was considering a rule change that would force injured players to sit out the remainder of their team’s current drive if they require medical assistance while still on the field.
Instead, the NCAA altered its proposal to avoid potentially incentivizing players who are really injured from staying on the field or running to the sideline while genuinely injured, according to NCAA national coordinator of officials Steve Shaw.
“We really think this is a good solution to feigning injuries,” Shaw said, via Yahoo Sports.
The motivation for the change in the injury timeout rule is to provide means for a team to stop their players faking injuries because the committee believes the issue is negatively impacting the game’s reputation.
“The committee identified the time period after the ball has been spotted as the most egregious violations of the injury timeout rule and is addressing the issue this way,” Georgia head coach Kirby Smart, who co-chairs the committee, said.
Smart added: “Having a set time frame of when the game is stopped for an injured player should hopefully help curtail the strategy of having players fake injuries.”
One prominent case of an apparently faked injury came when Ole Miss running back Matt Jones fell to the ground during a game in September.
At the time, college football rules analyst Matt Austin confirmed that the NCAA’s rule book doesn’t proscribe fake injuries directly, leaving officials without recourse to punish the act.
“There’s actually nothing in the rule book that says you cannot do that,” Austin said on the broadcast.
“There is very strong wording about being unethical to fake an injury at any time during the game. I know the rules-makers have talked about it several times, but as of right now, there’s nothing you in the book can do about it.”
Kirk Herbstreit also recently called out the practice of apparently faking injuries “unethical as hell.”
“This is college football. It drives me crazy,” Herbstreit said during a game.
“They look over after a big play, and all of a sudden, he looks over and he just goes down. It’s not necessarily against the rules, but it’s unethical as hell. When you see this all over against these tempo offenses, guys just go down with the quote-unquote ‘injury.’”
Now, the NCAA hopes to find a solution to a problem that college football wants an answer to before the kickoff of the 2025 season.
–
–
More college football from SI: Top 25 Rankings | Schedule | Teams
Follow College Football HQ: Bookmark | Rankings | Picks
This post was originally published on this site be sure to check out more of their content.
