NCAA announces college football rule changes to combat faking injuries

The NCAA is cracking down on football teams faking injuries with new timeout rules that would penalize teams that use the technique in a potential effort to slow a game down. On Thursday, the NCAA announced its Playing Rules Oversight Panel approved changes to injury timeout rules in football, beginning with the 2025-26 season.

Under the new rule, if medical personnel are forced to enter the field of play to evaluate an injured player after the ball is spotted by the officiating crew, the player’s team will be charged a timeout. If that team doesn’t have any remaining timeouts, a five-yard delay-of-game penalty will be assessed.

This injury timeout penalty was proposed by the NCAA Football Rules Committee earlier this offseason after many within the college football community expressed concern some teams were having players fake injuries to slow down the opposition’s momentum or to avoid taking a timeout.

The reasoning for the rule change now is to provide an immediate in-game mechanism that can potentially curtail teams utilizing fake injuries, as opposed to the previous mechanism, which required teams to send video of questionable injury stoppages to be reviewed NCAA national coordinator of officials Steve Shaw, who would then contact the offending team’s conference if it was clear the injury was a ruse.

This report will be updated.

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