Nick Saban calls for drastic college football rule change amid spate of fake injuries

Nick Saban is calling for a massive rule change in college football.Ole Miss has been at the center of the controversy over fake injuries after their 27-3 win over South Carolina on Oct.5 involved several players appearing to feign being hurt, likely in a move to slow the game down.Saban, the ex-Alabama coach, addressed the issue on ESPN’s “College GameDay” on Saturday.

“This is the integrity of the game,” said Saban.“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.

There’s a history to all of this because, in the old days, you used to have to run off the field if you got injured.I mean, I broke my leg, and I gotta run off the field.

Well, fastball came along, so everybody said, ‘If you’re getting injured, stay down — don’t get up.We can’t substitute fast enough.’“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 right before the play starts, flops, maybe it should be a charged timeout for that team because it’s pretty obvious in these situations where guys are flopping, and they’re not injured.”Gamecocks head coach Shane Beamer questioned the 11 pauses in the game in the postgame press conference last weekend.“I hope they’re OK… It’s fascinating to me how many injuries occur for them after the opposing offense makes a first down or has a big play…” he said.

“The timing of some of the injuries, it’s a really bad look for college football and it’s not what this game is about.”Saban’s “GameDay” colleague, Kirk Herbstreit, also took issue with the injury trend, taking aim at Oklahoma after the team appeared to fake an injury in the first quarter of their eventual 25-15 loss to Tennes...