Two college football rule changes were made official on Friday.
The NCAA Playing Rules Oversight panel officially approved both in-helmet communication on the field and a two-minute warning at the end of each half for college football, effective for the 2024 football season.
Each team will be allowed to have one player on the field at a time with direct communication to coaches through his helmet, and that player will be identified with a green dot on the back midline of his helmet.
Communications will be closed with 15 seconds remaining on the play clock or when the ball is snapped, whichever comes first on a given play.
Ohio State has already worked some with in-helmet communication during spring practice, with up to three players allowed to work with it during a given training session. The Buckeyes rotated those players throughout spring ball.
"It's been good to work through that," Day said on March 19. "Chip (Kelly) dealt with it when he was in the NFL, so he has experience in that. The easy thing is, when you're in the huddle, you just call the play and the quarterback calls the play and that's simple. But there are other ways to build in different hybrids between signals and calling it into the quarterback. There's verbal and then there's the physical signal. ... It's something new in college, each day we're learning a little bit more about it."
Teams will also have the option to use tablets on the sideline, exclusively to view in-game video. The video can include the broadcast feed and camera angles from the coach's sideline and the coach's end zone. Up to 18 tablets are permitted for use between the coach's booth, sideline and locker room.
Additionally, just as in the NFL, an automatic on-field timeout will be called at the first dead ball after the clock hits two minutes remaining at the end of the second and fourth quarters.
