One of the most peculiar issues that college football has had to deal with in recent years is the spike in sudden-onset injuries to defensive players.
Almost as if it were clockwork, an offense finding its rhythm comes to a screeching halt because of injuries that materialize out of thin air. At least, that’s what the opposing sideline would have the offensive coordinator believe.
Unfortunately, these “injuries” aren’t that at all. Rather, they are a popular form of gamesmanship that has given coaches a seemingly unlimited supply of timeouts.
It has become so much of an issue that SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey sent out a memo to SEC coaches and athletic directors warning them to “stop any and all activity related to faking injuries to create time-outs.”
“When defending against a ‘hurry up’ offense, you are to use the allocated team time-outs if you need to stop play, or you may allow the play to continue with the personnel and defensive play call in place,” Sankey wrote. “When on offense, if the play clock is running out, you are to use a team time-out or accept the delay of game penalty. Creating injury time-outs in these circumstances is not acceptable and is disrespectful to the game of college football.”
Sankey proceeded to lay out some penalties that would be enforced if the issues persisted, including a suspension of the team’s head coach, but it appears that the entire sport could be searching for an answer to this problem.
On Tuesday morning, Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger reported that the AFCA convention has had an interesting discussion point that could help alleviate the issue, theoretically.
“Here’s an interesting discussion point in Charlotte at the AFCA convention to slow feigning injuries: Any injured player would be sidelined the rest of the drive. Coaches could use a timeout to reinstate player,” Dellenger writes.
“It’s expected to be on the agenda at head coaches’ meetings today.”
This has been a somewhat popular idea in football circles for a while now, but the fact that it’s officially being discussed means we could actually have an answer on the horizon.
