Tennessee football: Discussed NCAA rules changes trend in Vols’ favor
They say nothing is accomplished overnight, and in the NCAA’s case, nothing can be accomplished within a decade. However, what’s important is if things are trending the right way, and in the case of NCAA rules changes, they are trending in the direction Tennessee football needs.
An Associated Press report last week detailed more discussed rules changes being discussed by the NCAA. Back in March, there was a focus on making targeting punishments more effective, and players can now appeal their punishment.
What upset Vol fans was the lack of rules changes to address players faking injuries. In Josh Heupel’s system, defenders will do that a lot to slow down the tempo. The Ole Miss Rebels blatantly did it, and the Purdue Boilermakers seemed to do it.
Well, there’s good news after all for Tennessee football. That report shows faking injuries is actually being looked at. There was no hard rule to stop it, but schools and conferences will be able to report suspicious injuries to a national coordinator of officials.
Now, although the coordinator would provide feedback, any potential penalties would be up to the conference or the school. Obviously, the school isn’t going to punish itself, so it’s up to the conference, and the SEC doesn’t have any plans to address this issue.
As a result, this change will have no impact in 2022. However, it shows the NCAA is finally looking at this issue. Because they are looking at it, change is almost certainly going to come in the near future, and it may be a safe bet that it happens within three years.
This year, Tennessee football needs to be one of the programs constantly bugging the national coordinator. They won’t be the only school doing so. If more do it and consistently complain, eventually the organization or the conference will be forced to cave.
Even if one conference does it first, others will follow suit. The Big Ten was the first to use instant replay, and eventually, the entire sport did it. Whichever conference gets annoyed the most by the coordinator feedback will fold first.
When that fold happens, a hard rule will be put in place. The best rule would be that a player has to miss the rest of a drive if he goes down. You could say quarter, but a player may then fake an injury in the last minute of a quarter.
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Still, there are multiple avenues to address this beyond leaving it up to the discretion of a coordinator or even the officials. When that happens, Tennessee football’s offense will take off even more than it did last year, so watch out.