For Oklahoma State No More Relaxed Substitutions! Rules Change Outlined

STILLWATER – The Big 12 Football Media Days did not have a preseason poll this summer, but that is not the only regular occurrence they skipped. The Big 12 Director of Officiating Greg Burks was nowhere in sight and there was no presentation from the stage as in years past to the college football rules changes and the analytics of football and officiating.

Down in Atlanta at the SEC Football Media Days, the SEC Director of Officiating John McDaid took the stage and delivered a bunch of analytics and thoroughly went through the rule changes in college football for this season. 

It starts at the line-of-scrimmage, doesn’t it always? McDaid outlined how defenses and especially defensive linemen had better not get caught trying to lure the offense into moving before the snap.

“What we've seen is over the last four or five years, the number of false starts per game has gone up, and I attribute it to what the defense is doing on that side of the ball,” McDaid told the media. “It's just not what I see in the Southeastern Conference, it's what my peers and I have all been seeing across the nation.

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John McDaid gave a complete run through of the college football rule changes.

“This year a change in the football rules is we're adding a standard to the defensive side of the ball that the offense has had for a century or more,” McDaid explained further. “The definition of a false start has forever been action that simulates the snap. That's standard, action that simulates the snap is now put on the defense as well, and the officials are being asked to judge defensive movement in that light.”

They will watch defensive linemen and yes, they can still stem or move in coordination to change gaps, but a less organized movement and possible forward lunging or sounds to draw the offense into moving will be met with a flag on the defense for illegal procedure.

“We're going to watch this defensive tackle that's lined up between the right tackle and the right guard, and you're going to see he has two down teammates to our left of him, for what football coaches do call stemming,” clarified McDaid. That action by the two that are stemming on our left, legal, but you can see in concert with that, we have a tackle between the right guard and right tackle who's flinching. He's simulating action at the snap, and it works. It makes the right guard move here. This is action that has now been written into the rules, codified that it's illegal, it's what we call delay of game defense. This is not a false start on the offense. The defense cannot simulate action of a snap for the purpose of trying to get his opponent to move prior to the snap.”

The next rule change hits Oklahoma State as once the offense has subbed, Mike Gundy began subbing a defensive lineman and had him nearly walk onto the field, while the player he was subbing for was walking to the sideline. The play clock would run out and Oklahoma State pushed the offense back five yards. 

Now, the defense will be required to substitute in an “athletic pace” meaning at least a normal jog. The only time the play clock should run out is if the offense waits and substitutes really late.

So, what is going to happen here?

“Watch the center judge. He's the official right behind the center. If we deem the defensive substitution is not with athletic pace and it's not being done promptly, we're going to simply take the center judge off the ball like we did on this play,” McDaid described while showing a video example. “Now the offense is free to snap the ball, and the defense may or may not have 11 players on the field when the ball is snapped. The concept of the substitutions need to be done with an athletic pace.”

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Cowboys often go fast on offense.

This will impact Oklahoma State as well. The Cowboys are still going to operate on offense in tempo or even turbo.

You probably heard about this. Defenses that feign injuries when an offense is trying to operate in tempo will be penalized. If a defensive player goes down in this situation, the team on defense will be charged a time out. If they are out of time outs then they will be panelized five-yards for delay-of-game.

Return teams have been using a “T” signal where the returner will hold his arms straight out and that told the return unit to let the cover unit run through. Some schools have used the “T” signal to try to mislead opponents, so now any “T” signal will be used and considered a “fair catch wave”.

Finally, in overtimes, after the second overtime into the third, teams will receive one timeout for the duration of the game. Afterall, at that point you are into the alternating two-point conversion attempts.