Concern over fake injuries has become such a significant issue in college football that it has become a priority on the agenda for the next rules committee meeting.
National Civil Servants Coordinator Steve Shaw said Athleticism On Monday, injury simulation will be “an important topic” at the NCAA Football Rules Committee’s next meeting on March 1. This is a rule change year, which means the group can present its recommendations for immediate consideration by the NCAA committee. Game rules monitoring panel.
“Obviously we want to eliminate simulated injuries from the game,” Shaw said. “It’s a bad image of the match. It’s a question of integrity. If you have a fake injury, your team gets an undeserved timeout. We’re really wondering: what’s the next step to move away from this? »
The sport knows it has a problem. Some defenses are willing to take any action possible to thwart the offensive rhythm, and the appearance of an unnecessary stop can draw complaints from coaches and fans. Last season, several high-profile games saw partisan crowds booing over an alleged fake injury while the home team had the ball; The fallout from such controversy during Iowa’s win over Penn State forced Hawkeyes coach Kirk Ferentz and Nittany Lions coach James Franklin to comment on the situation in the days following the match. Administrators have said for years that this is a problem, but they have yet to find an effective way to combat it.
In recent years, Shaw has attended the American Football Coaches Association convention to highlight the need to eradicate the phenomenon from the game. Coaches, including Stanford Coaches Rules Committee Chairman and David Shaw, spoke publicly on unethical behavior. Peer pressure brought few notable changes.
Last offseason, the rules committee implemented a sort of appeals process, in which a team could send a video to the national officials group after a game if it felt an opponent was faking injuries. “If this was warranted, the response would be referred to the athletic director of that institution, and the athletic director would take the following steps to ensure this does not happen again,” Shaw said. “That clearly didn’t solve the problem. The Rules Committee will continue this journey to find a way to eliminate false injuries from the game.
Shaw said one option under discussion would be to sideline a player who causes an injury stoppage for an extended period of time, such as one possession or a series of downs, perhaps with the coaches having the option to use a timeout to bring back a medically cleared player. the game earlier. Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin said last year that no one would stop faking injuries until there were real consequences to deter the behavior. In the past, officials have avoided such rules out of fear that legitimately injured players would try to stay on the field.
“You’re not going to stop him until you say a guy needs to be out for that many games,” Kiffin said days after injury stoppages at Ole Miss-Tennessee drew national attention. “As with everything, there has to be a penalty. Really, if you want to change it, let the conference review it, watch the film, and when they consider it an obvious simulation of an injury, then there’s a penalty, a fine, and I promise you this will never happen. anywhere.”
Shaw said the topic will be the focus of the March 1 meeting, “and there will be a desire to do something.” A next step.
“We just don’t know what it’s going to be.”
(Photo: Joseph Cress / USA Today)
