NCAA Football: Reaction to new rule changes
By Adam Gibby
Faking an Injury
Old Rule: No rules were against faking an injury
New Rule: A team or conference can appeal to the NCAA if they believe that a player faked an injury and there can be disciplinary action.
Commentary: What the heck?! Could they have butchered this rule any more than they did? First off, the problem with the old rule is that a ref couldn’t get onto a team/player because of the legal issues. What changes now? If a team gets fined and it later comes out that the player was actually hurt, they could be sued. After all, it is almost impossible to certainly say that a player was faking an injury. There is a very high chance that the appeals will fail 95% of the time, because how can anything be proven?
The solution to this is very simple.
If a player is too hurt to play or make it to the sideline, they must sit out the rest of the possession. The argument against this is that players will now play through injuries to avoid going down and being out the rest of the possession.
The issue however is, if a player isn’t healthy enough to make it off of the field onto the sideline, how are they possibly going to be healthy enough in two or three plays to have a full contact play?
The bottom line is, I don’t see a scenario realistically where a player is so hurt they can’t get off the field but are suddenly able to play two minutes later.
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What do you think about the rule changes? What other rules would you change? Let us know in the comments!