NCAA Announces New Rules To Combat Players Faking Injuries
The NCAA announced this week that the Playing Rules Oversight Panel has officially approved changes to the injury timeout rules beginning this fall. The new rules were made in an effort to prevent players from faking injuries, a predominant issue in college football, according to ESPN.
The new rule was approved officially on Wednesday, and it stated that if medical personnel enter the field to evaluate a player that has been potentially injured after the ball is spotted by the officiating crew, the player’s team will be charged with a timeout, Heather Dinich wrote.
The initial proposal was created due to an increase in teams faking injuries in order to stop their opponents’ momentum.
Steve Shaw, the NCAA secretary-rules editor/national coordinator of officials, is the individual who was in charge of accepting requests from teams when they believed their opponents had faked an injury, and would then take disciplinary action.
According to the NCAA’s release, the rule change next season will allow fake injuries to be called out mid-game because “Football Rules Committee members think these actions negatively affect the overall perception of the game.”
Shaw told ESPN that while he still will review film if asked, his role is now to determine if a team is taking advantage of an injury timeout to gain an advantage.
With the new rule, the committee compiled a nine-minute video highlighting moments that could have been considered fake injuries from last season.
Shaw stated that this video “shows an integrity issue in our game that needs to be addressed.”
“When you watch that video, action is required,” Shaw said.
“Sometimes players may do it on their own because it feels accepted, and that’s what we want to stop. I’m not sure there is a perfect solution, but I think this is a good first step.
This will have an impact on those that are very obvious and are late and looking to the sideline and going down. Coaches do not want to risk a timeout under any circumstances. Those are very valuable commodities in the game.”
“If it doesn’t have an impact, there will probably be another step, but it’s a good starting point and hopefully this will clean it up.”
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.