Nick Saban calls for 'flop rule' penalty amid faking injuries

There’s been a lot of chatter about faking injuries, particularly with Ole Miss, and Nick Saban called for a “flop rule” amid the discussion.

Saban simply wants there to be some kind of penalty if a player flops or fakes an injury. Of course, a lot of this could be subjective in terms of a player actually being hurt or not.

But there are some obvious cases as Saban and ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit pointed out.

“This is the integrity of the game, 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 said on College GameDay. “But you know, 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. I mean, I broke my leg and I had to run off the field.” 

Once offenses increased speed, this flopping or faking injuries became more of an issue. It was just a strategic way to slow the game down and reset on defense.

“If you get injured, stay down, stay down, don’t get up, because, you know, we can’t substitute fast enough, right,” Saban said. “All right. So now people are taking advantage of this rule, but I think until there’s some 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. 

“And if a guy actually gets up, runs down, and then right before the play starts, he flops, maybe it should be a charged time out, you know, for that team, because it’s pretty obvious some of these situations where guys are flopping and they’re not injured.”

Nick Saban calls for ‘flop rule’ penalty, protect integrity of the game

Herbstreit’s talked to officials and agreed with Saban that there should be a rule. But it’s a complicated issue.

“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 off season to come with the rule to establish if you fake an injury, this is what’s going to happen.’ I think you have to do what the NFL does, use replay. So what we’re talking about is not an Ole Miss thing. This is a college football thing. 

“Guys after a big 40 yard play against an up tempo offense, defensive guys get a signal from the sideline as they’re jogging to get back and get ready to line up, and then they go down, like if a camera were to catch that, and then you ding them, like you said, whether it starts out with a time out, 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. I think replay would be a great way to help.”

There are solutions out there, but as Saban pointed out, it starts with the coaches.

“Yeah, I think there’s several solutions here, but it’s going to start with the coaches and the integrity of the game and I think we all should respect the integrity of the game because there’s so much passion for our game and so many people and so much fan interest,” Saban said. “And when you hear people booing constantly because of this, that’s a problem.”

“It’s unethical, it’s not breaking a rule but it’s unethical,” Herbstreit added.