For the third season, college football is making significant rule changes. The rules will affect end-of-game situations and time management. For the first time in NCAA history, they issued two-minute warnings in the second and fourth quarters. In-helmet communication on the field is another new idea. The NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel originally announced the changes in March. The panel officially approved the ideas last week.
Rule Change Not an Effect of University of Michigan Scandal
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Some have suggested this change is a result of the University of Michigan sign-stealing scandal last season. Still, in March, rules committee co-chair Kirby Smart said they designed helmet communication to grow closer to NFL expectations. Ex-Michigan staffer Connor Stallions resigned last November, two weeks after his suspension. The scandal resulted in a multi-game suspension for former coach Jim Harbaugh. Fortunately, for the reputation of Michigan, Stallions was the only staff member tied to the investigation. He bought tickets for third parties to attend games and film opponents’ sidelines, providing data for his sign-stealing agenda.
“That’s not what the sole intent was,” Smart told ESPN. “I’ve been on the rules committee now for three to four years, and coach-to-player communication has come up every single year. It’s been talked about. We’ve been evolving, trying to get closer to it. A lot of coaches debate, talk about how this is not going to stop people from signaling or having the big cardboard signs on the sideline.”
“A lot of people have said it would take 11 headsets to take that way or three or four headsets to take that away. That’s not the intent. The intent is to get a little closer to what the NFL has done to allow communication. We don’t know where it’s going to take us, so we’re going to onboard one step at a time. It allows communication between mostly your quarterback and somebody on defense, and we’ll find out where it takes us.”
Two-Minute Warnings and Other Rule Changes
Two-minute warnings, a note taken from NFL rules, will generate crunch-time offense highlights and prepare draft prospects for what’s to come in their post-collegiate career. The consistency between NFL and NCAA rules will challenge traditions in football as a sport. These rules boost the expectations of college players, preparing them to better fit into the standards of their professional careers.
With scouting prospects adapting to NFL standards in college, recruits will perform at a higher level than before. Since NFL players are more competitive than ever, this change sets the highest precedent for performance. NFL performance is already more balanced than ever, with the era of dominant long-yard passing commanders such as Drew Brees and Peyton Manning replaced by athletic Patrick Mahomes and Dak Prescott types.
They’ve eliminated consecutive timeouts. Teams can no longer “ice the kicker” before a field goal attempt, nor can a head coach call a timeout before an offensive or defensive snap if the team is coming out of the previous play.
Another minor change is that of untimed downs due to defensive penalties. These untimed downs will not extend the first or third quarter. Instead, officials will clock them in the second and fourth quarters. This rule further proves that NCAA games will feel more like NFL games, with shorter and tighter games. There is no change if a defensive penalty occurs at the end of the first or second half, and they will play the next down untimed.
There’s also a change in warm-up activities for teams returning to the third quarter. This change should prevent opposing teams from seeing the other teams’ warm-up activities. This change shows NCAA concerns for each team’s strategic privacy. Using drones to film plays while teams are warming up is strictly prohibited, a change implemented earlier this spring.
These changes add to recent rules implemented for player safety. These rules include home teams paying the opposing team if their fans rush the field at the end of the game. It will amass a $100,000 fine for first offense, $250,000 for the second, and $500,000 for the third. John McDaid, the SEC’s coordinator of football officials, said that changes preventing blocking below the waste was a hot-button issue among coaches.
Last season saw these NFL standards in the clock continuing to run after first downs unless chains move inside the final two minutes of play in the first and second halves. This change resulted in an adverse effect of a close finish, a sign that NCAA football looks more and more like NFL games each year.
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