When former Alabama head coach Nick Saban is fired up about something, people listen. On ESPN’s “College Gameday” Saturday, Saban made a passionate plea for college football coaches to stop “taking advantage” of the injury timeout rule by having players “flop.”
“This is the integrity of the game,” Saban said. “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 even went as far to call for rule changes to punish teams that participate in the “unethical” practice.
“I think until there’s a 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,” Saban continued.
“Something needs to happen when it’s so obvious that you’re trying to slow [the game] down,” Saban added, clearly frustrated.
The seven-time national champion’s comments come in the wake of a rash of seemingly fake injuries simulated by players this season.
Most notably, Mississippi running back Matt Jones was caught on camera in Week 5 dropping to the turf after his quarterback, Jaxson Dart, gave him a signal to go down and seemingly buy the offense more time to organize.
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,” Saban said. “Well, then fast ball came along and people said if you get injured stay down, stay down, don’t get up, because, you know, we can’t substitute fast enough.”
Saban’s co-host, Kirk Herbstreit, agreed but added a dose of reality to the conversation, revealing officials say they aren’t in a position to punish players.
“Every game I get on the field the last three or four years, and I talked to the officials when teams are warming up, and I say, ‘What [are] you guys going to do about this, all these guys faking these injuries,’” Herbstreit said. “And every single time, they say, ‘Listen, we can’t call that. That’s on the coaches in the offseason to come with the rule to establish if you fake an injury, this is what’s going to happen.’”
Herbstreit suggested the conferences or NCAA should use replay to identify the “obvious” instances and penalize them.
“If a camera were to catch that, and then you ding them, like you said, whether it starts out with a timeout, maybe unsportsmanlike dead-ball penalty, whatever it is, something needs to happen when it’s so obvious that you’re just trying to slow the opposing offense,” Herbstreit said. “I think replay would be a great way to help.”
