The proposed change to the rules will allow conferences to appeal targeted fouls that were awarded in the second half of the game to avoid the penalty of carrying forward in the first half of the next game, the NCAA Football Rules Committee said Friday.
The commission, which began meeting on Wednesday, also proposed a reporting and investigation process to draw attention to teams that have been awarded an injury timeout when a player simulates an injury. If the Game Rules Oversight Panel approves the changes to the rules at its April 20 meeting, the new rules will begin this season.
If a team believes a referral call was wrong, its conference will be allowed to send a request to Steve Shaw, NCAA National Coordinator for Review. If it is obvious that the player has been wrongly penalized, the call will be canceled and the player will be cleared for the first half of the next game.
“If last year is an indicator, it will be just a few calls,” Shaw said. we will correct it if we can. “
Each referral foul is already reviewed by repetition, and since there are no “stands”, judges must either confirm all aspects of the referral violation or dismiss it. Shaw said the sport currently has an average of one foul every five games.
“It’s not every head coach who’s upset that their boy was kicked out,” said Stanford coach David Shaw, chairman of the NCAA Football Rules Committee. “It’s really a process to make sure we’re doing it right. This has been our driving force over the last few years when it comes to targeting, it really is to make sure we do it right, and we have appropriate penalties for those who are targeted, but also mechanisms to make sure we see all the indicators to target and give us the opportunity to correct a potential error. “
Steve Shaw said the rule committee spends more time talking about players who simulate injuries “than any other problem in our game.” Currently, during an injury timeout, the participating player must be absent for one game.
The group considered several in-game decisions, including extending the time the injured player must miss after the time was up, but could not come up with one that “fits perfectly.” Instead, the proposed rule will give the school or conference the opportunity to contact Shaw to make it easier to watch the video. All sanctions will depend on the conference office or school.
“I would like to see that there are severe penalties for people who practice unethical things in the game,” said Shaw from Stanford. “And this is unethical and there have been severe penalties for individual coaches in the past. I would like to see this intensified.”
The Commission has also proposed a rule that will allow blocking just below the waist by line players and fixed backs inside the board box. Steve Shaw said it was “a great change for the safety of players.”
“From our injury data, we can see that when we made changes and limited the blockage below the waist, especially in the open field, we reduced the injuries to the knees and lower body,” Shaw said. “We like this trend, so we’re making a pretty significant change this year in terms of blocking below the waist.”