Players ejected for targeting in the second half of a college football game could be eligible to play the following game after an appeal through the conference office, if a recommendation handed down Friday by the NCAA rules committee is approved.
After four days of meetings in Indianapolis, the committee also recommended penalizing all open-field blocks below the waist and creating an investigation process for allegations of a team faking injuries that could lead to conferences penalizing schools and coaches.
Recommendations need approval from the playing rules oversight panel in April and would go into effect next season.
The committee discussed changing how the game clock is managed to shorten games by both time and number of plays, but decided not to act.
The average FBS game was 3 hours, 28 minutes last season and included about 137 offensive plays.
Shaving time and plays out of college football games has become a discussion point recently as conference commissioners considered possibly expanding the playoff, a move that could increase the maximum length of a season to 16 or even 17 games for a few teams.
Attempts to expand the College Football Playoff to 12 teams by the 2024 season failed and the soonest a new format would be implemented now is 2026.
National coordinator of officials Steve Shaw said the number of players per game has plateaued over the last six seasons after a slight decrease.
”But we have talked about at some point do we need to address this if the season does get longer because it is a longer playoff,” said Stanford coach David Shaw, the rules committee chairman.
The rules committee has been looking at ways to discourage the faking of injuries, mostly by defensive players to slow down up-tempo offenses, for several years.
Steve Shaw said the committee remains apprehensive to implement in-game…
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