Each year, college football undergoes a few tweaks, often small changes to the rules designed to make the games a bit smoother for all involved. In 2024, there will be a few more rule changes than usual, which may lead to some confusion for fans in the early weeks.
With a plethora of changes among the college football new rules, let’s break them down and look at them one by one.
Coach-to-Player Communications Headlines College Football Rule Changes
The biggest change in 2024 involves helmet communications. While a few bowl games experimented with the change last year, it did not become an officially approved rule change until earlier in 2024.
The basic premise is that a single coach will be able to communicate with a single player on each side of the ball. No more than one player may communicate with a coach, and that player must be identified with a green dot on the back of the helmet, much like in the NFL.
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Coaches can communicate with the designated player through radio headset communications before each play from scrimmage until there are 15 seconds left on the play clock, at which point communication will be cut off until the play clock resets.
Other miscellaneous rules within the coach-to-player communications include a five-yard penalty for more than one “green dot” player on the field for any non-kickoff play and a 5-yard penalty for any violation of the communication rules.
While this only applies to FBS teams, FCS teams playing FBS teams are allowed the same communication.
Other College Football Rule Changes: In-Game Video Tablets, Two-Minute Timeouts, and More
In a somewhat related rule change, the College Football Rules Committee is allowing the use of sideline tablets for in-game video.
Much like the NFL, college teams will now have the ability to show players replays of the current game only. Each team is limited to 18 tablets and may use up to three different cameras, and there is no restriction on which players can view replays.
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While coaches can have tablets in the coach’s box, sideline, and locker room, a coach may not engage an official with a tablet to show video or ask for a review, lest he receive a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty.
The other big rule change that mirrors the NFL game is the instillation of a Two-Minute Timeout (Note: The official name is a timeout, not a warning.) At the end of each half, there will be a timeout with two minutes remaining.
This, ideally, will be one of the scheduled media timeouts that is held back, but if there is no scheduled media timeout remaining, the timeout will be one minute, plus a five-second referee notification and the 25-second play clock interval.
Since college football already has a unique set of timing rules for the last two minutes of each half, such as 10-second runoffs and clock stoppages after first downs, the Two-Minute Timeout will simply put a scheduled break between the game timing changes.
The Rules Committee also made minute changes to the enforcement of overturned replay reviews.
First, if a player is called down before attempting a throw and that is overturned, the ball will be placed at the spot of the catch if caught or the line of scrimmage if incomplete.
Second, the Rules Committee revamped how penalties are enforced. If a play is overturned, 5- and 10-yard penalties will not be enforced and will become dead-ball fouls. Unsportsmanlike conduct and personal fouls will always be enforced, regardless of the outcome of a review.
Other rule changes for the game of college football in 2024 include wearable technologies, a two-minute timeout, new first-down timing rules, collaborative replays, horse-collar tackle enforcement, prohibited field equipment, penalty and replay enforcement, and new dead ball/loose ball rules.
Wearable technologies were approved to DIII requests from the Old Dominion Athletic Conference, the Liberty League, and the Eastern Collegiate Football Conference.
The two-minute timeout will now mirror that of the NFL, for the first time, bringing a stoppage at the 2:00 mark of the second and fourth quarters.
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First-down timing rules have been amended at the DDI level, joining their counterparts at the higher tiers where the game clock continues to run following a first down outside of two minutes remaining of each half.
The horse collar tackle improvements have been added to within the tackle box. Specifics for camera allowances have been changed, mainly behooving the main broadcast partner, not the regional broadcasts, as they limit head coach availabilities following the halves of football and following the game.
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