Oregon’s apparent ingenuity has led to an in-season rule change.
The NCAA sent out a rules memo Wednesday outlining the new procedures for officials when a team commits a substitution foul inside the final two minutes of either half.
With 10 seconds to go in Oregon’s 32-31 win over Ohio State in Week 7, Oregon called timeout and then added a 12th player onto the field after the timeout. Ohio State, facing a third-and-long, threw an incomplete pass away from where the 12th player was located.
Oregon was penalized five yards, but four seconds ran off the clock. Ohio State QB Will Howard scrambled up the middle as time expired on the next play and Oregon won the game.
Going forward, the clock will be reset if a team tries to replicate what Oregon did inside the last two minutes of each half.
“After the two-minute timeout in either half, if the defense commits a substitution foul and 12 or more players are on the field and participate in a down, officials will penalize the defense for the foul and at the option of the offended team, reset the game clock back to the time displayed at the snap,” the note from the NCAA states. “The game clock will then restart on the next snap. If the 12th defender was attempting to exit but was still on the field at the snap and had no influence on the play, then the normal substitution penalty would be enforced with no clock adjustment.”
The change comes after the NCAA’s director of officials told Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger that a change to the rule would be examined. But could there still be a loophole? Oregon’s 12th defender had no involvement in the play against the Buckeyes. Is the wording in the new interpretation regarding a player running off the field enough of a deterrent for a team not to try Oregon’s tactic again with a tweak?
Monday night, Oregon coach Dan Lanning didn’t explicitly confirm the Ducks purposely had a 12th defender on the field, but he made it clear that his team had practiced multiple end-of-game scenarios.
“There was a timeout before that — we spend an inordinate amount of time on situations,” Lanning said. “There’s some situations that don’t show up very often in college football but this is one that obviously was something we had worked on. So you can see the result.”
