Josh Heupel addresses controversy on stopping clock with fake injuries

Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel is the latest college football coach to talk about players faking injuries. After Tennessee’s win over Kentucky, Heupel said that players definitely do that “at times” and that it is now a way to get substitutions or to slow the game down.

“At times I think people do that,” Heupel said. “In this football game we moved the ball with tempo. And guys end up finding a way to go down and allowing substitutions to happen or just change the momentum of the football game.”

Tennessee’s offense presented problems for Kentucky. Vols quarterback Hendon Hooker was 15 of 20 for 316 yards and four touchdowns. Tennessee’s offense was explosive, taking advantage of a lot of big plays. Kentucky actually led the time of possession battle by 36 minutes. But the temp did present issues for the Wildcats.

Tennessee is not 5-4 on the season, but a tough home matchup against Georgia looms on Saturday.

Heupel joins Sam Pittman, Kirk Ferentz in speaking out against fake injuries

The issue of “flopping” and faking injuries has taken over college football this season. It is becoming a much more frequent occurrence, simply because there is no way to stop it from happening. In addition to Heupel, Arkansas head coach Sam Pittman and Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz have previously spoken out about fake injuries in today’s game.

A couple of weeks ago, Pittman talked about officiating, replay, and fake injuries. He noted that it is impossible for officials to tell at the time whether an injury is real or fake, making it difficult to find a way to prevent it from happening.

“I don’t think you can as an official,” Pittman said of whether you can truly tell if a player is flopping or truly hurt. “I think we take that totally off of them. That’s unfair to ask them if he’s hurt or if he’s not hurt. It’s a coaching issue. It’s a non-penalized flop as long as there’s not a penalty. Maybe if you see something after a game and you suspend the coach or the player for doing that, then maybe it’ll stop. But right now you’re seeing 20 flops a game. I don’t want to get too deep into it because I don’t know that all of them came back healthy and I’m certainly not a medical doctor, but it has to be addressed.”

Ferentz also spoke out against Penn State for presumably faking injuries earlier in the year. Iowa fans booed Penn State, and Ferentz added that the fans “aren’t stupid” for doing so.