Subscribe
Follow Us
The Oregon football team hosted Ohio State over the weekend, and it ended up being one of the best college football games that we have seen all year. Both teams came into the game ranked in the top-three, and the Ducks ended up getting the win, 32-31. However, the NCAA is now looking into a rule loophole that Oregon head coach Dan Lanning used at the end of the game.
Late in the fourth quarter of this game, Ohio State was driving and they only needed a field goal to win the game as they trailed 32-31. The Buckeyes got into field goal range, but a costly offensive pass interference penalty pushed them back 15 yards and out of range. That is when Oregon football head coach Dan Lanning pulled his interesting move.
There were 10 seconds on the clock, and Ohio State needed some yards to get into field goal range. Out of a timeout, Lanning sent 12 guys out onto the field. The logic was that the extra player would help eliminate a big play and they would gladly give the Buckeyes five yards while wasting more clock.
Ohio State threw an incomplete pass, and there were just six seconds left after the penalty. Ohio State got five yards, but they needed more than that. Buckeyes quarterback Will Howard didn't seem to know how much time was left, because he accidentally ran out the clock on the next play, and Oregon won. So the question was, did Lanning put 12 players out there on purpose? He says yes.
“There was a timeout before that — we spend an inordinate amount of time on situations,” Lanning said, according to a post from Brenna Greene. “There’s some situations that don’t show up very often in college football but this is one that obviously was something we had worked on. So you can see the result.”
Now, the NCAA is looking into this loophole that Lanning and Oregon used, and they could be making a change to the rules because of it.
“The NCAA Rules Committee is examining the loophole that Oregon coaches used against Ohio State, a committee official tells @YahooSports,” Ross Dellenger said in a post. “They could take in-season action to address the play by directing officials to handle it differently in the future.”
It will be interesting to see what (if any) changes are made. The most logical response from the NCAA would probably be making this a dead ball foul which would make it so teams can't use this to get time off the clock like Oregon did, but we'll see. Always something going on with this sport.
