There are a lot of concerns when it comes to college football. One of them over the last couple of seasons has been the number of injuries that teams have been “faking” in games to stop the momentum of their opponents and their drives. It has become a hot topic in the SEC, but it’s hard to police a lot of the time because of player safety.
There have been proposals to try and get “faking” injuries out of the game, and nothing has seem to won the NCAA over. Well that all seems to have changed and on Thursday, Matt Zenitz reported that the NCAA has approved a change in regards to injury timeouts.
NCAA approves rule change in terms of injuries for college football
This has the potential to be a rather big change moving forward in the sport. According to Zenitz, the following rules will apply when it comes to injuries in games after the ball has been spotted by the officials.
The NCAA has approved a change regarding injury timeouts pic.twitter.com/V9UMHN2Dvb
— Matt Zenitz (@mzenitz) April 17, 2025
To summarize, if the ball is spotted by the officials and a player goes down, the team of the injured player would be charged a timeout. If they are out of timeouts, then it will be a 5-yard penalty. When all is said and done, it’s going to come down to game management for teams to have a timeout or two available if the happens.
It’s another form of game management that coaches like Brent Pry need to work into his game management, which is already suspect, at best. If you’re gonna “fake” an injury, then you’ll need to account for it.
Virginia Tech has never been one to fake an injury late in games, and nor will it ever likely happen by Pry. It’s not part of what he preaches. Injuries are going to happen at any point in a game, and this is just another part of the game that coaches will need to manage better, or a costly penalty could be in play.