NCAA approves rule allowing fair catches inside the 25 to be ruled touchbacks

A new NCAA rule change will incentivize kick returners to fair catch kickoffs.

The fair catch isn’t a rare thing in football, but it doesn’t usually happen on a kickoff. That’s about to change thanks to a new NCAA rule change.

The NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel approved altering football’s kickoff rules to allow the receiving team to fair catch the kick inside the 25-yard line and have it result in a touchback.

The Football Rules Committee made the proposal to continue efforts to increase the number of touchbacks during kickoffs since fewer injuries occur during kickoffs that result in touchbacks than on kickoffs that are returned. All other aspects of the kickoff play will remain the same.

The new rule is the latest in a series of changes the committee has made in recent years in hopes of making the play safer.

The rule was passed on Friday. While this technically does make kickoffs safer, the idea of giving the offense a free pass to start at the 25 wouldn’t go well with special teams coordinators.

It’s not far-fetched to see this as a continuation of the phasing out of the kickoff play from the sport entirely.

That might seem like a slippery slope argument, but this is just the latest in a move to make the play safer. Back in 2012, kickoffs were moved forward five yards and touchbacks were moved from the 20 to the 25-yard line. Both changes were to encourage more touchbacks. This new change adds a defense to the strategy of a kickoff team kicking the ball down inside the 5-yard line on purpose to try and get a tackle before the 25-yard line.

No college fair catch will ever be stranger than the ones in the NFL which use a very little-known rule that actually allows for the receiving team to elect to take a free kick.

You don’t have to transition to offense when you fair catch in the NFL. You can choose to take a free kick where there’s no snap, and the other team can’t even rush, but they can try to return it. It leads to extremely comical kick attempts, and the last one converted was in the 1970s. The Cowboys actually declined to do this in a playoff game just last year.

Now that this is officially on the books in college, it would definitely never happen even with this new proposal because we’d be talking about a 90-yard field goal attempt. But that would be something to see in a game just for fun.