NCAA closes loophole for illegal substitution after Oregon 12-man penalty vs. Ohio State

The NCAA has issued a new rules interpretation following a highly controversial tactic used by Oregon in a narrow win over Ohio State this weekend.

The NCAA issued the following ruling to curb the loophole Oregon exploited against Ohio State:

“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 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 existing rules came into question after Oregon intentionally fielded 12 men on defense at a pivotal point of the game against Ohio State. The clock was winding down, and the Ducks took advantage of the ruling to get an extra defender on the field — at the expense of a 5-yard penalty — while also draining four additional seconds off the clock.

The clock was not reset following the penalty for 12 men on the field, resulting in a small net gain for Oregon with the game on the line.

Now that loophole will be closed.

“Football is a very dynamic game,” the NCAA’s Steve Shaw said. “Occasionally there are specific situations where committing a penalty can give a team an advantage. A guiding principle of the NCAA Football Rules Committee is that there should be no benefit when a team commits a penalty. The goal of this in-season interpretation is to eliminate a potential clock advantage for committing a substitution foul and take away any gain for the defense if they violate the substitution rule.”

Various college coaches had weighed in on the rule in place following Oregon’s use of it, with most seeming to take the side that the exploit should be closed.

“I think if you see 12 on the field I think at some point they’re going to have to stop the game and penalize someone for having 12 out there,” Arkansas coach Sam Pittman said. “The rule is the rule, and Dan used it to his advantage because there was no penalty for that per se. There was, but the penalty didn’t matter at that point in the game, so they’ll have to interpret it and look at it.”

Job done.