NCAA Proposes Rule Change Charging Timeouts, Penalties for CFB Teams Faking Injuries

The NCAA is eyeing rule changes to crack down on any fake injury exploitation in college football.

Adam Rittenberg of ESPN reported that the NCAA football rules committee has proposed a new rule that would see a timeout be assessed to teams that have medical personnel enter the field to evaluate players "after the ball has been spotted for the ensuing play."

"Teams without timeouts would be assessed a five-yard delay-of-game penalty for each instance," Rittenberg added.

This would only factor in after the ball had been spotted, so injuries that occur during a play would not result in a lost time out. The intention behind the proposed rule change is to prevent players from embellishing an injury in an attempt to buy more time to set up a play.

Steve Shaw, the secretary-rules editor for football and the SEC and Sun Belt's coordinator of football officials, told Rittenberg that the rule change could work due to how highly coaches value their timeouts.

"Coaches value their timeouts incredibly," Shaw said, per Rittenberg. "Making this a timeout, if a player were to wait and then go down very late, the coaches would really be against unless you're really injured, and then they may have needed a timeout anyway."

The issue was huge in 2024, with the SEC having to resort to penalizing teams that were blatantly faking injuries. Having a rule in place will hopefully rid that unnatural element of the game and help the late stages of the game feel more authentic.