Sure, there’s a replay booth… but what if there’s more?
A proposed rule change would allow conferences to appeal targeting fouls that were called in the second half of games in order to avoid the carryover penalty of sitting out the first half of the next game, the NCAA Football Rules Committee said Friday.
The committee, which began meeting Wednesday, also proposed a reporting and investigation process to address teams that are awarded an injury timeout when a player is believed to have faked an injury.
If the Playing Rules Oversight Panel approves the rules changes at its April 20 meeting, the new rules will begin this season.
If a team believes a targeting call was erroneous, its conference would be allowed to submit a request to Steve Shaw, the NCAA’s national coordinator of officials, for review. If it’s obvious the player was incorrectly penalized, the call would be overturned and the player would be cleared for the first half of the next game.
The good news, I guess, is at least they won’t be wasting time during a game with this. But shouldn’t there be somebody to review Shaw’s review? (I keed, I keed… I think.)
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To address teams that are awarded an injury timeout through deceptive actions, the committee proposed a reporting and investigation process. Schools and conferences would be able to report questionable scenarios to the national coordinator of officials, who will review and provide feedback to the conference for further action. Any penalties levied would be up to the conference office or school involved.
“It is very difficult to legislate ethics, particularly when an injury timeout is being used to gain an advantage,” David Shaw said. “The small number of teams that seem to use these tactics should be addressed directly.”
The committee considered several in-game options to address this, including altering the injury timeout rule to remove the injured student-athlete for more than one play, which is the current rule. This concept was debated at length, but the committee was concerned with the additional issues that could be created and did not want to encourage players to continue to participate when injured.
Committee members discussed how the pace of play appears to be contributing to this concern. “We considered all options to address this issue, including allowing both teams an opportunity to substitute after a first down,” David Shaw said. “This is another step to consider in the future.”
I can’t wait to see the first school levy a punishment against its own head coach for this… although, now that I think about it, it’s probably a good thing McGarity isn’t in Athens now.
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There’s one little bit in this ESPN puff piece about the tap dance the ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 are putting on together that gave me a chuckle:
If there is one certainty in collegiate athletics, it’s that change is always occurring, including conference realignment. All three conferences understand that, as each has added teams over the past decade. At least in the short term, the Alliance agreement discourages them from poaching each other. But the leagues didn’t sign a contract.
“If that’s what it takes to get something considerable done, then we’ve lost our way,” Phillips said in August.
In the long term, will the “gentlemen’s agreement” touted when the Alliance was formed actually hold up once another wave of realignment begins?
After what happened to trigger the formation of their “Alliance”, these three can’t even come to a binding arrangement not to raid each other? Yeah, rock solid, that is.
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