NCAA lays down the law with plan to punish teams for players faking injuries

Fake injuries have been a plague on college football in recent seasons, and nowhere was it more prevalent than in the SEC last year (mostly because its games are seen by more folks on television). League commissioner Greg Sankey has previously admonished teams for the supposedly covert practice, but to no avail.

It had gotten so bad that even usually unbiased commentators piled on players who were obviously trying to slow down high-paced offenses with little to no consequences.

But finally, it appears the NCAA is going to address the fever pitch of complaints about what has seemingly turned into a culture problem in college football, similar to soccer and its over-the-top injury antics. According to a report by ESPN's Adam Rittenberg on Friday, the NCAA will consider a newly proposed rule that would force teams to take a timeout or face a penalty if a player goes down to stop a play from getting off.

Newly proposed rule would cost teams timeouts, penalties for fake injuries

Specifically, if a player goes down with an "injury" after an official spots the ball for play, then that team must take a timeout or incur a five-yard delay of game penalty. If said team is all out of timeouts, the penalty is automatically assessed. However, if a player is attempting to exit the field and struggles to make it before having to go down, the proposed rule would not be triggered.

"There's these plays where the ball's down, the defense is still trying to get to their side of the ball, and a player falls down. Those are the types of plays that we don't want, that we think is a bad look, and we think this rule will address it," Steve Shaw, the secretary-rules editor for football and the SEC and Sun Belt's coordinator of football officials, said.

"Coaches value their timeouts incredibly," Shaw continued. "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 proposal will be examined by schools before being considered by the NCAA's rules committee for potential adoption in April. Previous proposals included measures that forced the "injured" player to miss an entire possession for going down. It's currently unclear how much support among member institutions this newest proposal has.