There\u2019s been quite a bit of talk around rule changes in college football this offseason, with expansion being a key topic as deliberations are ongoing on whether to move the College Football Playoff to 24 teams.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not the only rule change, however, as the NCAA introduced a new punt formation rule for the 2026 season. And coaches do not like it, especially in the Big Ten, where Wisconsin Badgers head coach Luke Fickell and every other Big Ten coach voted against it, according to ESPN\u2019s Pete Thamel.<\/p>\n
The new rule stipulates that the snapper and the players lined up on each side of them automatically become ineligible receivers on punt players when certain jersey number exceptions are used. The rule was to combat coaches disguising players as eligible receivers during fake punts, taking away an element of surprise for special teams coaches.<\/p>\n
Additionally, according to Tennessee Tech special teams coordinator Frank Wilson Jr., here are the other major changes:<\/p>\n
Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz voiced his displeasure with the rule change, believing that the original rules were good as is.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no compelling reason to change it. It was already perfectly fine,\u201d Ferentz said, via Thamel.<\/p>\n
In addition, on a recent podcast, ESPN\u2019s Rece Davis said that coaches universally hate the rule change, noting, like Ferentz said, that nobody asked for it nor do they want it.<\/p>\n
According to a USA Today report, an unofficial survey of Division I coaches held a 61-1 vote against the rule. That\u2019s quite the discrepancy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s been quite a bit of talk around rule changes in college football this offseason, with expansion being…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":659148,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,99,15053,94777],"class_list":["post-659147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-football","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-sports","tag-wisconsin-football","tag-wisconsin-football-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}