The NCAA Football Rules Committee will look into stopping the process of faking injuries as an artificial way to halt games, according to a report Tuesday from The Athletic.
The idea is not a new one: almost any player (more on this in a second) who stops a game and requires help to leave the field would not be permitted to return to the game for the remainder of that drive, unless a timeout is called during the drive.
Quarterbacks and "green dot" defensive players would be exempt from the rule -- permitted to return after one play -- to prevent a doomsday scenario where a quarterback gets the wind knocked out of him on a late-game drive where his team does not have timeouts.
The proposal has been batted around among unofficial channels for years now but never formally brought to the NCAA's legislative process due to the fear that it would incentivize truly injured players to seek the attention they actually need.
The thinking, at least among some power players in the rules-making space, has since flipped. "Injured players staying in the game too long" is a hypothetical problem; "healthy players exploiting a loophole to improperly manipulate the game" is an actual problem. A problem that previous efforts -- warnings and strongly-worded letters -- have failed to stop.
“There’s a push by the stakeholders in the game saying, on feigning injuries, something must be done,” Steve Shaw, national coordinator of officials and committee rules editor, told the site. “We can’t kick the can down the road once again.”
A proposal by the rules committee could be voted on by the NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel in April and implemented as soon as this season.
Other topics expected to be on the docket:
-- Moving to an NFL-style coaches challenge system for instant replay
-- Not awarding timeouts beyond the second overtime period to prevent the basketball-style parade of timeouts that arose during the Georgia Tech-Georgia game.
-- Substitution mechanics
-- Expanding coach-to-player communication to FCS
-- "Looking at" wearable technology