National Coordinator of Officials explains new rule interpretation after viral Oregon 12-men penalty

Oregon head coach Dan Lanning made headlines for his heads-up play in the final minute of the Ducks’ 32-31 win over Ohio State last week. With 10 seconds left in the game, Ohio State was down one point and third-and-25 on Oregon’s 43-yard line.

Before the play, Oregon called a timeout and made an illegal substitution, putting 12 players on the field. Whether or not the move was intentional, it gave the Ducks an extra defender, and Ohio State quarterback Will Howard failed to find a completion.

Oregon was penalized five yards for the play but four pivotal seconds ran off the game clock. On the next play, Howard accidentally ran out the clock while attempting to get down within field-goal range. After the game, outraged Ohio State fans called for the NCAA to investigate this loophole in the rules to prevent a similar situation from unfolding in the future.

On Friday, the national coordinator of officials, Steve Shaw, explained how the NCAA changed its rules to prevent teams from taking advantage of illegal substitutions again.

“Our new interpretation is that after the two-minute timeout in either half, if the defense commits a substitution foul — which they did here — and have 12 or more players on the field and they participate in the down, then officials will penalize the defense for the substitution foul,” Shaw said. “But, at the option of the offended team, we’ll reset the game clock back to the time displayed at the snap.

“The game clock will then restart on the next snap. So [in the Oregon-OSU game], after the five-yard penalty on the defense from the previous spot, we would reset the clock to 10 seconds, and it would start on the next snap, and the offense would get to repeat third down. Now, if the 12th defender was attempting to exit but was still on the field of play at the snap and had no influence on the play, then the normal substitution penalty would be enforced with no clock adjustment.

“But I think we’d all agree here that these 12 players did participate in the play. And this new interpretation, it really eliminates any potential clock advantage by the defense for having 12 or more players on the field.”

In short, teams won’t be able to game the system again in the future. Nonetheless, Oregon took advantage of the loophole while it still had the chance and walked away with the biggest win of its season thus far.

Oregon hopes it won’t need any last-second antics on Friday to defeat the Purdue Boilermakers who are 1-5. The two teams will square off at 8 p.m. ET. The game will air live on FOX.