NCAA rules committee intends to clarify flopping rule in men's basketball

Just call it the Jaylin Williams rule.

The NCAA Men’s Basketball Rules Committee intends to more clearly define the rules on flopping, it was announced on Thursday. The committee is expected to recommend that any player caught faking being fouled (flopping) will immediately be assessed a Class B technical foul without prior warning, resulting in one free throw for the opposing team.

As the rule currently stands, players caught flopping receive a warning before being hit with a one-shot technical foul if caught as a repeat offender. The NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel will meet on June 9 to discuss any potential rule changes for the upcoming 2022-23 season.

Here is how flopping is currently defined in the rulebook, per the NCAA.

“Faking being fouled (flopping) on block/charge plays, on attempted tries on field goal attempts or using any other tactics such as a ‘head bob,’ which might incorrectly lead an official to believe that a foul has been committed.”

Men’s Basketball Rules Committee plans to clarify definition of flopping. https://t.co/YUYrKUn7zc

— Inside the NCAA (@InsidetheNCAA) May 5, 2022

Flopping has become a more prevalent issue in all levels of basketball over the last few years particularly. To pick on him for a second, Arkansas’ Jaylin Williams became a bit of a viral sensation for his tendency to draw — or over-exaggerate — contact from offensive players. He drew over 50 charges this past season, some within the confines of the rules, some maybe the result of good acting. So this new clarification will ideally help rid the game of some of those questionable antics.

“We didn’t feel like we were getting the results that we wanted with the warnings,” Bob Huggins, committee chair and head coach at West Virginia, said in the press release. “Our goal is to continue to try to get flopping out of the game. The committee believes giving the officials the ability to call a Class B technical foul the first time they see a player faking being fouled, it will be more of a deterrent.” 

I would rather the rules committee lean into overhauling the charging call as a whole, but I suppose this is at least a start. Now let’s see if the officials actually enforce it the entire length of a season.

The NCAA also snuck in a few other noteworthy items in this press release.

1. The rules committee is still toying with the idea of allowing live video and pre-loaded video on team benches for the upcoming season, depending on how the conference decides to use it.
2. Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes is now the rules committee’s new chair.
3. Lastly — and this is the confusing one — is the possibility of incorporating one extra media timeout per half. So instead of four media timeouts at the under 16-minute, 12-minute, 8-minute, and 4-minute marks of each half, it would go to five at the under 17-minute, 14-minute, 11-minute, 8-minute, and 4-minute marks of each half. According to the NCAA, “The rationale is to help the flow of the game so commercial breaks will not be taken when teams use their allotted timeouts.” And I’m not buying it. Outside of the final two minutes of a game, coaches typically call timeouts in the midst of scoring runs, which happen spontaneously. An extra media timeout in between isn’t going to swing the needle enough for a coach to consistently wait out a bad scoring run. This just seems like a way for the game to slow down more, which is already an issue at times.