Oregon exploited a loophole in its win over Ohio State, part of a long tradition in rule-bending

Updated Oct. 18, 2024 7:10 a.m. ET

Associated Press

By his own admission, Oregon coach Dan Lanning and the rest of his staff — currently at 30 and counting — spend “an inordinate amount of time” exploring all kinds of potential situations that may pop up during a game.

Some happen. Some don't. Some get saved for a rainy day. And sometimes, that rainy day arrives in the final seconds of a showdown with another top-five team, as it did last Saturday against Ohio State.

Did Lanning explicitly order a 12th player — one too many than the rules allow — onto the field just before Ohio State snapped the ball with 10 seconds to go? Lanning won't say. Not in so many words anyway.

"This was obviously something we had worked on,” Lanning said Monday. “You can see the result.”

So could everybody else, including Steve Shaw, the NCAA's national coordinator of football officials.

By the time the final sequence ending with the Buckeyes running out of time in a 32-31 loss went viral — and long before Lanning offered essentially a non-denial denial about exploiting a loophole, Shaw and his team were already working on closing it.

By Wednesday, the rules committee had issued a new interpretation, one that allows the game clock to be reset back to the time displayed at the snap when a defensive team commits an illegal substitution penalty.

The interpretation was the fourth in-season update issued by Shaw this year, which he jokingly called a “world record” during his tenure that began in 2020. Most pass without notice.

This was different, in part because of the high-profile nature of the game and the outcome.

Yet the reality is that programs have scoured the rulebook for years looking for places to explore the fringes of legality. Whether what Oregon did can be classified as “cheating” or merely “gamesmanship” depends on your perspective, and it’s a debate that’s likely been going on since the first chariot race in ancient Greece.

Shaw doesn’t expect the trend to slow down as staffs expand, analytics become more prevalent and the financial stakes in the College Football Playoff era escalate.

“We’ve got all these coaches and analysts laying awake at night trying to figure something new out,” Shaw told The Associated Press. “And so we work to be proactive and work ahead but the creativity of the sport is always going (require us) to be prepared to react if something new arises that hadn’t really happened before.”

Cal's intentional penalties

When California visited North Carolina in 2018, the Bears were protecting a two-score lead late when their defensive backs grabbed the Tar Heel wide receivers at the snap, figuring a penalty was better than allowing a late touchdown as they hung on for a 35-30 win. The committee responded by issuing an interpretation that allowed obvious defensive holding calls be converted into unsportsmanlike conduct penalties while also resetting the game clock.

Hack a Shaq

Shaquille O'Neal was essentially unguardable for the majority of his basketball career. The only place the Hall of Fame center struggled was at the free-throw line, where he was a career 52% shooter.

NBA coaching legend Don Nelson came up with a counterintuitive method for limiting O'Neal's effectiveness: fouling O'Neal when he was away from the ball. The concept? O'Neal was less of a problem shooting from the line than he was turning defenders into roadkill in the low post.

The practice soon caught on not just when it came to guarding O'Neal but other poor-shooting NBA big men. The league introduced modifications to the rules in 2016 designed to deter the practice but did not eliminate it.

The Gretzky rule

The “Great One” wasn't just great, but crafty too. Wayne Gretzky and the Edmonton Oilers had such a significant skill advantage over their opponents that at times they would intentionally take a penalty that coincided with a penalty on the other team.

Why? Two players in the penalty box meant fewer players on the ice. Fewer players on the ice meant more room for Gretzky, Jari Kurri and Mark Messier to operate. The NHL grew so frustrated at the practice that the league's board of governors voted in 1985 to keep teams at five-on-five following coincidental minors, though the rule was later rescinded in the early 1990s.

Getting sticky with it

Think of former Raiders cornerback Lester Hayes and one image immediately pops to mind: the five-time Pro Bowler's upper body covered in gobs of stickum.

Longtime teammate Fred Biletnikoff introduced stickum — an adhesive that is a mixture of several substances, including resin — to Hayes as a rookie. While Biletnikoff used it plenty (including during his MVP performance in the Raiders' first Super Bowl victory in January 1977), Hayes took it to another level. The player who picked off 13 passes in 1980 slathered the goop on his hands, forearms and his uniform.

The NFL finally banned stickum in 1981, though the gloves worn by wide receivers and defensive backs these days could be considered spiritual descendants of Hayes' signature gunk.

Buddy Ball

The late NFL coach Buddy Ryan had no problem playing by his own rules.

Ryan was coaching the Philadelphia Eagles in 1989 when he sent out 14 players onto the field to cover a punt late in a 10-9 win over the Minnesota Vikings. The way Ryan figured it, having so many players on the field limited the ability for a big return and if 6-10 seconds ran off the clock, all the better.

Officials didn't catch the ruse in real time. In typical Ryan fashion, he made sure everyone knew what he'd done after the game. The NFL ultimately tweaked the rule to put time back on the clock in those situations.

The ‘Disgrace of Gijon’

FIFA has long required the final games of a given group stage during a World Cup be played simultaneously.

Blame it on a painful and embarrassing lesson learned during the 1982 tournament.

West Germany and Austria met in the last game of their group stage knowing fellow group member Algeria had already played. West Germany needed to win and Austria merely needed not to lose by more than three goals for both teams to advance.

The West Germans took an early 1-0 lead. The rest of the game looked more like a “learn to play” clinic, with players on both sides idly passing the ball to each other to run out the clock so both squads could move on to the knockout round.

It's known as the “Disgrace of Gijon,” named because Gijon, the city along the northern Spanish coastline where the game was played.

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AP Basketball Writer Tim Reynolds and AP Pro Football Writer Josh Dubow contributed.

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