The start of a new college football season is a time of unbridled optimism.
For struggling teams and coaches, it’s an opportunity to engineer a much-needed turnaround with players in the best shape of their lives playing in up-tempo and aggressive schemes. At the top of the sport’s food chain, national championship aspirations remain alive and unchallenged for the best teams across the country.
In 2024, a new season comes with some important new rules.
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Over the offseason, college football’s rulebook underwent some notable tweaks when it comes to the structure of the game, how its played and how its officiated. After a trial run of sorts last weekend at the FBS level, those changes will be witnessed on the largest scale yet when the overwhelming majority of the 134 FBS teams begin their seasons this weekend.
Here’s a look at the most consequential college football rule changes ahead of the 2024 season:
College football rule changes 2024
Coach-to-player communication
For the first time, games involving FBS teams will allow coaches to communicate directly with a player on the field through a radio in the player’s helmet. That designated player will be identified with a green dot on their helmet. That communication will be cut off either with 15 seconds remaining on the play clock or at the snap, whichever comes first.
The NFL has been using the technology for decades. On offense, for example, a coach can relay a play call to a player — with few exceptions, it's the quarterback — who can then pass that information along to their teammates.
For much of its existence, college football took a different approach, with play calls being relayed to players via coaches on the sideline, who would pass along their message through a series of signals, be it hand gestures or large play cards featuring a collection of images.
The rule change came after years of college football coaches publicly pleading for an NFL-style system. Those requests and demands accelerated last season when it was revealed that Michigan allegedly took part in a sign-stealing scheme, one that involved people traveling to future opponents’ games and filming the coaches on their sideline to decipher what each signal meant.
While the Wolverines’ system was reportedly more formalized and included in-person scouting, which is explicitly banned by the NCAA, sign-stealing was a common practice in college football for decades, a practice made possible by the rather elementary way play calls were communicated.
With coach-to-player communication through a helmet, those concerns should be mitigated, at least in theory.
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Two-minute timeout
Since 1942, the NFL has had the two-minute warning, the point in the game at which the game clock stops with, you guessed it, two minutes remaining, both in the first half and second half.
Now, college football will have something similar.
Beginning this season, when the game clock is running and the ball is not live, the referee will stop the clock with exactly two minutes left in the second and fourth quarters. If the ball is live, the clock will stop immediately after the play ends. It is referred to in college football as the "two-minute timeout," but it is functionally the same.
Originally established to inform fans inside the stadium how much time was left during an era in which officials, not a visible in-stadium game clock, kept the time, the two-minute warning has since become a tool to manufacture drama and, more importantly, give television networks an additional commercial break.
Analysis from The Athletic found that the two-minute timeout did not add extra TV timeouts to game broadcasts during Week Zero of the season.
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Tablets for in-game video
The in-helmet radio isn’t the only technology that will be coming to college football this season.
Teams in all divisions of the sport now have the option of viewing in-game video on tablets. Teams can have up to 18 tablets distributed on the sideline, in the locker room or in the coaches’ booth. On those tablets, coaches, staff and players can review the game broadcast feed, along with camera angles from their sideline and the end zone.
The tablets come with limitations, as they can’t connect to other devices, project larger images or provide analytics or various forms of data.
Horse-collar tackle
As a player safety measure, horse-collar tackles that occur within the tackle box will be penalized as a 15-yard personal foul. Under previous rules, a horse-collar tackle within the tackle box was not outlawed.
