Sam Pittman weighs in on controversial Oregon 12 men on the field penalty loophole

Oregon drew plenty of eyes on Saturday in its huge upset win over Ohio State, in part because of a unique strategy that took advantage of a loophole in the rules around having 12 men on the field defensively.

The Ducks intentionally fielded 12 on one late defensive play against the Buckeyes, gaining an extra defender — at the cost of a 5-yard penalty — while running precious time off the clock in the process. It was an intentional move, calculated to best maximize the chances of slowing the Buckeyes in time.

Since then, Steve Shaw, the NCAA secretary rules editor, told Yahoo! Sports that the NCAA rules committee is considering issuing an interpretation to the rule that would close the loophole.

Arkansas coach Sam Pittman sees that as a necessary step.

“Well I think probably once they see 12 men — and I’m not talking about guys running off the field, that’s a different scenario. Because you can take the play or not, but you’re not actually playing with 12 guys, you’re trying to get off the field,” Pittman said. “But 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.”

As for Oregon, Pittman tipped his cap to head coach Dan Lanning.

“The rule is the rule, and Dan used it to his advantage because there was no penalty for that per se,” Pittman said. “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.”

Many have wondered if the penalty was truly intentional even after Lanning claimed it was. Pittman lent support to that argument from the Oregon coach.

“I’ve been to, I think now, 12 Division I programs and several of those programs have talked about that because the risk versus the reward, the reward is much greater than the penalty,” Pittman explained. “Certainly we haven’t, we don’t do it here. But I’m not chastising anybody. It’s the rule, they used it to their advantage. Is it good for college football? You know, I don’t know that. I think they’ll interpret it and get it corrected.”

Pittman had one other item on the docket when asked about fair play. He made sure to slide it in during his answer about the particular Oregon situation over the weekend.

“Certainly I think they ought to do something about guys flopping on the field,” Pittman said. “And that’s hard, because you don’t know if a guy’s injured or if it’s real. We put a lot on those officials. But I think they’re going to have to really look at that as well.”