The NCAA football rules committee’s latest idea to stop the trend of faking injuries will be to charge a timeout in certain situations.
As part of the 2025 rules proposals revealed Friday, a team would be charged an injury timeout if a player goes down due to injury after the ball is spotted for the next play. If a team is out of timeouts, it will be a five-yard penalty for delay of game. All proposals from the football rules committee must be approved by the NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel on April 16.
It’s a less dramatic proposal than the one from the American Football Coaches Association, which asked that any player who goes down for injury be required to sit out the rest of the drive, but the hope is the idea revealed Friday will curtail most incidents. Faking injury has been used as a tactic to slow down an offense’s momentum and tempo. The committee said the period after the ball is spotted is when the most egregious violations have occurred.
“We looked at a lot of video on these and saw many are occurring not at the end of the play, but after the play,” NCAA coordinator of officials Steve Shaw said. “So we think this will hit and take the incentive for a player to feign an injury after a play is over. We’ll monitor and see how it goes.”
The topic of faking injuries has been discussed by the committee as high-profile situations have come up in recent years, even leading game broadcast announcers to question the legitimacy of supposed injuries during games. Schools have been allowed to request postgame video reviews of teams. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey sent a scathing memo to his schools in the fall over the topic, telling them to just play football.
Another reason the committee opted against the coaches’ proposal to sit a player for a drive is that they didn’t want a player who is actually injured to try to play through that injury.
Overtime timeouts, 12 players and other proposals
Several other proposals revealed Friday are direct results of incidents in games this past season.
If a defense goes through a play in the final two minutes with 12 players, it will be a five-yard penalty, and the offense will have the option to reset the game clock. This is a result of Oregon using 12 players on the second-to-last play against Ohio State in October, where four seconds ran off. If the 12th player is attempting to leave the field, it will just be a five-yard penalty. This would codify the interpretation added after the game last fall.
Another proposal would give teams just one timeout for the third overtime and beyond. This comes after the Georgia-Georgia Tech game went eight overtimes and saw three timeouts called in the final five two-play overtime periods. Two bowl games also went at least five overtimes.
Kick return teams using the “T” arm signal would also result in a dead ball call, per another proposal. This came up in the Citrus Bowl when South Carolina ran a kick return trick play against Illinois after doing the T signal, which informally signals letting the kickoff go through the end zone. When Illinois coach Bret Bielema checked on an injured Illini player a few plays later, he gave a T signal to South Carolina’s bench, causing Bielema and Gamecocks coach Shane Beamer to yell at each other.
Among the other proposals, officials would announce that replays were “upheld” or “overturned,” removing the calls of “confirmed” and “stands.” Helmet communication used in the Football Bowl Subdivision last year would be allowed at the Football Championship Subdivision level.
Targeting, coach challenges and substitutions
There were no new proposals around targeting, coach challenges or substitutions, but all will get more attention. On targeting, the penalty and stoppage often draw the ire of fans for perceived inconsistency in the calls, but Shaw said there were 0.14 targeting penalties enforced per game this season, the lowest since the rule went into place.
Big Ten vice president of football operations and rules committee co-chair A.J. Edds said the rules committee has a targeting recommendation that will go to the conference commissioners for feedback, rather than the NCAA membership of schools, and the committee could react depending on how that goes. He didn’t reveal what that recommendation is, but Shaw emphasized there is no backing away from the definition of targeting.
The idea of moving to a coach challenge replay format like the NFL was discussed again but still doesn’t have enough support. Edds said the committee will monitor and collect replay information to help illustrate and answer why a coach challenge model could be beneficial, and it’ll be discussed again next year. Coaches have generally been against such a move.
Substitutions grabbed the attention of fans this past season as defenses would sometimes sub slowly if given the opportunity following an offensive sub. The rule allows the defense to sub if the offense does. Shaw said officials will need to make sure it’s handled correctly and not allow defensive subs to be too slow on purpose, but no formal rule change was needed.
“If done properly, we’re very comfortable in our game and when the offense substitutes, the defense can match up,” Shaw said. “If the offense substitutes late, they put themselves at risk for a delay of game, but if the defense doesn’t act in an expeditious manner and players begin to lollygag, we’re going to release the center judge and they put themselves in a situation where they could have 12 on the field. Coaches may try different things, but we have to stay with our process to ensure it’s fair for both the offense and defense.”
Required reading
(Photo: Isaiah Vazquez / Getty Images)
