SEC commissioner Greg Sankey wants teams in his conference to stop faking injuries.
Sankey wrote a letter Friday to the athletic directors and coaches of the 16 schools in the SEC telling them to cut down on injury faking. It’s not uncommon for teams to drop a player when the opposing offense is rushing in an effort to avoid switching defenses, and the drill is no stranger to the offensive side of the ball either. If you’ve watched college football long enough, you’ve seen a game where a player goes down in circumstances that are somewhat suspicious.
Greg Sankey sent a memo to SEC coaches and ADs ordering them to stop directing players to feign injuries and imposing penalties that, for a third violation, could include a coach’s suspension, according to a copy obtained Through @YahooSports.
“Play football and stop the feigned injury nonsense,” he writes. pic.twitter.com/1ShgBeve9V
— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) November 1, 2024
Sankey’s letter ends with the line “play football and stop the nonsense of feigned injuries.” In it, he says the SEC will submit a video to the National Coordinator of Officials if “a circumstance warrants” regarding a fake injury and that teams will be penalized. if a player is found to be feigning an injury to cause a stoppage.
The penalties are a $50,000 fine and public reprimand for the head coach for the first fake injury, a $100,000 fine and reprimand for the second fake injury and a third finding “will result in suspension of the head coach for the team’s next game. ”
“In the future, I will consider a feigned injury to have been identified when the National Coordinator states that it is more likely than not that a feigned injury has occurred, that a player has attempted to feign an injury, or that some other general statement of the National Coordinator states that ‘the action of a feigned injury can never be absolutely verified through video, and I cannot say with absolute certainty whether the player is actually injured…’ It will be determined that a feigned injury has occurred, unless the National Coordinator accepts clear medical information that the player had to stop play due to an injury time-out and changes the finding of the feigned injury in a timely manner.”
That paragraph is followed by an underlined sentence that states: “your team must be prepared to compete fairly according to the rules of the game.”
With five weeks to go, there’s a good chance a coach in the conference will be reprimanded by the league before the end of the regular season. It will be fascinating to see which team is punished first.
