SEC Coordinator of Officials Breaks Down Rule Changes Ahead of 2024 Season

A couple major rule changes are coming to college football next season. Here's all you need to know about the upcoming changes that will impact future games.

Jul 18, 2023; Nashville, TN, USA; SEC coordinator of football officials John McDaid speaks with the media during SEC Media Days at Grand Hyatt. / Steve Roberts-USA TODAY Sports

Outside of a team, its players and coaches, no one comes under more scrutiny in a game of football than the officials. There is no pleasing all the fans as an officiating crew, but they can always make amendments and changes to smooth out the game and, most importantly, protect the players.

The upcoming changes are primarily focused on enhancing communication between a coaching staff and it's athletes. All of them are rules previously implemented in the NFL. Knowing they are battle tested, while also affected, is an important step for implementing these rules into the college game.

The SEC Coordinator of Officials John McDaid made it clear that these rules go hand-in-hand with ones already implemented into the National Football League. The first of these rules is one that certainly impact player-coach communication.

"The first is the adding of radios to players helmets such that we can have coach to player communication on the field, during the game. The way we've implemented it and made it a permissive rule in the NCAA largely mirrors the way they do it on Sundays in the National Football League," McDaid said.

This rule was inserted into the NFL game way back in 1994 for the same reason it is being implemented into the NCAA. It is solely for limited contact between one player on the field and a coach on the sideline.

Only one player at a time on either side of the ball will have this speaker in their helmet. They will be marked with a green sticker on the back of their helmet to signify that they have the speaker-radio system in their helmet. Radios on both sidelines shut down after the 15 second mark on the playclock. After that mark hits, both sides radios will shut down.

The next biggest change is the addition of tablets on the sidelines. This is widely known as an NFL rule and will be implemented into the college game this coming year. The viewing that players and coaches will do is not exactly the same as it is in the NFL, however.

"The caveat I mentioned earlier is that in the NFL, they have tablets on the sideline but they only have still photos... In College we're going to have full motion video and that is the requirement. They can not have advanced analytics on that tablet. They can't bring up video from another game. They can only look at what we call the program feed, the television broadcast for that particular game", McDaid said.

Finally, the NCAA is adding a two-minute warning timeout. This is mainly to help with television partners and sponsors. It is not a new or additional timeout and will occur at the end of each half.

"This was created for a couple of reasons. One was our television partners wanted the ability to reserve one of the media timeouts for the second and fourth quarters for a natural break in the game," McDaid said.

Like the other changes, the two-minute warning is a mirror addition from the NFL. That seems to be a common theme amongst the new additions, which potentially opens the door for more in the future. Though the new technology on the sidelines doesn't directly impact the fan-viewing experience, they are changes that will help teams communicate and make in-game adjustments.