Nick Saban calls for big college football rule change

Alabama coach Nick Saban looks on. Photo Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

Nick Saban thinks college football needs to do something to eliminate fake injuries, even if that means a new rule against it.

Saban on Saturday addressed the issue of teams faking injuries in order to slow down games or buy time. The former Alabama coach suggested that all of it comes from the sideline, and that it negatively impacts the integrity of the entire sport.

“This is the integrity of the game. And there’s no player that flops in a game that doesn’t get a signal from the coach to do it, to slow the game down,” Saban said. “There’s a history to all this, because in the old days, you used to have to get up and run off the field if you got injured. I broke my leg and I’d have to run off the field. Fastball came along, so everybody said, if you get injured, stay down, because we can’t substitute fast enough. Now people are taking advantage of this rule.

“Until there’s some penalty for doing it, and I know it’s a very sensitive subject for an official to make a determination about, is a player injured or not, but there should be a flop rule. If a guy actually gets up, runs down, then right before the play starts, he flops, maybe it should be a charged timeout for that team, because it’s pretty obvious, some of these situations where guys are flopping and they’re not injured.”

Fake injuries have become a pretty big point of contention this season. One school has been accused of it so much, they issued a statement addressing it prior to this weekend’s games.

Saban is right that it is an extremely touchy subject to determine if an injury is legitimate or not. He is correct, however, that some of them are really blatant . It certainly seems reasonable to think something could be done about those instances.

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