Last Saturday night top five teams the Ohio State Buckeyes and the Oregon Ducks faced off in a game that had the two teams separated by just one point going into the final minutes.

Ohio State had the ball and was marching down the field with just seconds remaining in the game when The Ducks were charged with a penalty for having too many men on the field.  What at the time seemed like an innocent mistake that allowed the clock to run out and Oregon to win the game by a single point – 32 to 31.

But it appears that perhaps the move was not so innocent when Oregon coach Dan Lanning spoke at a new conference on Monday saying, “we spend an inordinate amount of time on situations and some situations don’t come up very often in college football, but this was obviously something we had worked on.”

With 1:47 left in the game, kicker Atticus Sappington kicked a 19 yard field goal for Oregon to take the lead.  Ohio State then took the ball and was marching down the field when they took a time out with just 10 seconds remaining in the game with a third and 25 on the Oregon 43 yard line.  It was at this point that Oregon had 12 players on the field and the play continued and the Ohio State receiver missed the pass.  Ohio State gained five yard on the play but had only six seconds remaining in the game.  Ohio State quarterback Will Howard chose to run the ball but went down for a slide after the clock had reached zero.

The NCAA has now amended the rule to ensure that in future, such a defensive penalty cannot determine the result of the game.

The new ruling reads: “After the Two-Minute Timeout in either half, if the defense commits a substitution foul and 12 or more players are on the field and participate in a down, officials will penalize the defense for the foul and at the option of the offended team, reset the game clock back to the time displayed at the snap.  The game clock will then restart on the next snap.  If the 12th defender was attempting to exit but was still on the field at the snap and had no influence on the play, then the normal substitution penalty would be enforced with no clock adjustment.”

NCAA coordinator of football officials Steve Shaw noted that the “guiding principle of the NCAA Football Rules Committee is that there should be no benefit when a team commits a penalty.”

He added, “the goal of this in-season interpretation is to eliminate a potential clock advantage for committing a substitution foul and take away any gain for the defense if they violate the substitution rule”.