Breaking down new college football rule changes and how it impacts South Carolina
In just one day, college football will officially be back. But around Columbia, the season doesn’t start for another eight days when South Carolina hosts Old Dominion next Saturday.
When the games begin, there will be some noticeable changes that will surely have a big impact for years to come.
On Thursday at Carolina Calls, Gamecocks head coach Shane Beamer spoke about some of the newer rules for this season and what it means for his team. Let’s take a look at some of the bigger changes and Beamer’s thoughts.
Potentially the biggest rule change will be coach-to-player communication. This means they’ll be able to talk to each other during games through a radio-like system. The player using helmet communication will have an unbranded green dot on the back midline of his helmet.
“Dowell Loggains and myself will be able to talk to the quarterback in his helmet down to 15 seconds on the play clock. So the play before ends, starts over at 40 seconds. So for the next 25 seconds, Dowell and myself can talk to the quarterback. … And then at 15 seconds, it cuts off,” Beamer said.
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Offensively, the plan will be for newly-named starting quarterback LaNorris Sellers to use this. But on defense, the Gamecocks are still figuring out who will be the one relaying information from the coaches to the other players.
“On the same page, Clayton White can do that with one of our defensive players as well. So it’s very much like the NFL,” Beamer said. “It’ll be interesting to see how teams utilize it across college football. It’s something that we’ve been practicing with since the springtime.”
While this should be helpful in lessening sign stealing, there’s another factor to consider: crowd noise. Whether South Carolina is home or on the road, it’s going to be tough to hear at times. But Beamer has already been preparing for this as it will be inevitable.
“(On Thursday) in practice, for example, the offense went outside and the defense went in the indoor and we just cranked up the crowd noise, because we know it’s going to be really loud in Williams-Brice Stadium next Saturday when the defense is on the field,” he said. “We needed to get used to Clayton being able to talk, and our defensive player that has it, being able to hear Clayton as well over the crowd noise.”
Also much like the NFL, tablets will be allowed to watch back in-game video footage. Though, that does not include analytics, data or any other communication access. Teams will be able to use up to 18 tablets, with all team personnel able to view footage.
“The tablets will be huge. Every level of football has it,” Beamer said. “You go to a high school football game, you watch, they all have tents on the sideline with big screen TVs, and you’re watching what happened in between series. And then the NFL has the iPads, tablets, so we’ll be able to utilize that. We practiced with that in our last couple scrimmages.”
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The other main rule change Beamer spoke about was the two-minute warning, which has been in the NFL since 1942. There will be an official timeout with two minutes to go before halftime and in the fourth quarter. It’s something that Beamer called a potential “game changer.”
“For years as college coaches, you had a pretty good handle on the clock, meaning, okay, if there’s two minutes and four seconds left in the game and the other team has three timeouts — you may or may not. Here’s the point where you can start taking these, or here’s the point if you’re winning where you need to run the ball into another first down, wherever it might be. To me, that’s pretty ingrained,” Beamer said.
“Now that’s a game changer because of the two-minute warning. I don’t think it will affect the players so much. It’s just an extra timeout for them, but for myself and the coaches, it now changes the mechanics of when you use your timeouts.”
When South Carolina practices on Friday, Beamer said the team will be working on specific situations dealing with the two-minute warning. Specifically when it comes to playing defense, the goal to get the ball back again becomes even more important.
“Let’s say there’s two minutes and 25 seconds left at the end of the first half, and we’re going to punt the football, but we want to try and get the ball back again,” Beamer explained. “So now it’s not like hurry up offense, it’s like hurry up punt. Let’s hurry up and get the punt team out there and punt. So now we can have that timeout and some timeouts to get the ball back. So it’s a lot of different strategy, but to me, it really affects coaching more than it does players.”
Other rule changes coming to college football this season also include wearable technology, first down timing rules, collaborative replay, horse-collar tackles within the tackle box resulting in a 15-yard penalty, and no additional replay once the first half has ended.
South Carolina kicks off against Old Dominion on Aug. 31 at 4:15 p.m. on SEC Network.
