The following rule changes were approved by the NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel for the 2022 season.[1]
In games featuring instant replay, when players are disqualified for a targeting call in the second half or in overtime (which requires a carryover penalty of sitting out the first half of the next scheduled game), an appeal process will be available to allow the National Coordinator of Officials to review tapes of the targeting penalty for consideration of not requiring the player to sit out the first half of the following game.
Injury timeouts awarded due to "deceptive actions" during a game will also be able to be reviewed by the National Coordinator of Officials to determine what sanctions, if any, against teams who use this tactic, enforced at the conference or school level.
Blocking below the waist will only be permitted inside the tackle box by linemen and stationary backs. Blocks below the waist outside of the tackle box are not allowed.
The penalty for players who commit illegal blocks or contact after a signal for a fair catch is changed from 15-yards to 10-yards, and is no longer considered a personal foul.
Defensive holding will remain a 10-yard penalty but will now always carry an automatic first down. Previously automatic first downs on defensive holding were awarded if the quarterback attempted a pass.
Codifying the rule change made shortly after the 2021 ACC Championship Game, ball carriers who simulate a feet-first slide will be declared down at that spot. This rule has informally been referred to as the "Kenny Pickett Rule".
Defensive players who commit unsportsmanlike conduct penalties during a pass or run play will have the 15-yard penalty enforced from the end of the run/pass like a personal foul penalty.
Uniform rules were changed to require the sock/leg covering to go from the shoe to the bottom of the pants, similar to the NFL rule.
Illegal touching (intentional) of a forward pass by an ineligible receiver now includes a loss of down penalty in addition to the yardage (5-yards).
Other headlines
March 1 – The Sun Belt Conference released its 2022 football schedule. Notably, the schedule included Marshall, Old Dominion, and Southern Miss, schools that had announced their departure from Conference USA and were then in a dispute with C-USA regarding their departure date, with Marshall having sued C-USA. The SBC release did not mention the dispute or the possibility that the three schools would not be able to join for the 2022 season.[2]
March 29 – C-USA and the three aforementioned schools reached a settlement that allowed said schools to join the SBC in July 2022.[3]
May 18 – The NCAA Division I Council voted to approve multiple changes to football administrative rules. Among these changes:[4]
Restrictions on how conferences determine which teams qualify for their conference title games were removed. The Pac-12 Conference was the first conference to scrap its divisions for the 2022 season. While it will continue its division-based scheduling model for that season, it announced that it would consider other models for future seasons.[5]
All annual signing limits were removed for the 2022–23 and 2023–24 academic years. Only the overall scholarship limits (85 players receiving athletically related financial aid throughout D-I football, with 63 full scholarship equivalents in FCS) remain in place for those seasons.
A win over an FCS team will count toward bowl eligibility if the FCS team awards at least 80% of that subdivision's limit of 63 scholarship equivalents over a two-year rolling period, down from the previous 90%. This made permanent a change that the NCAA had made on an ad hoc basis in 2020.
The council made permanent a set of criteria, originally established on an ad hoc basis in 2020, for filling bowl slots in seasons when the number of bowl slots is greater than the number of teams with .500 records.
May 20 – The Mountain West Conference announced that it would eliminate its football divisions starting with the 2023 season.[6]
June 28 – The ACC approved a new football schedule format after the May 18 NCAA ruling. Starting in 2023, the conference will abandon its divisional model in favor of a "3–5–5" format in which each team plays 3 permanent rivals and 5 other conference teams each season, with the non-permanent opponents rotating so that each team will play every other conference member at least once home and once away in a four-year cycle. Under this format, the championship game will feature the top two teams in the conference standings.[9][10]
August 18 – The Big Ten announced a new all-sports media rights deal, running from 2023 to 2030, with Fox, CBS, and NBC that will provide the conference a reported $7 billion. By the end of the deal, each of the 16 members (including 2024 arrivals UCLA and USC) will receive as much as $100 million annually.[13]
August 31 – The Division I Board of Directors adopted a series of changes to transfer rules.[14]
Transfer windows were adopted for all Division I sports. Student-athletes who wish to be immediately eligible at their next school must enter the NCAA transfer portal within the designated period(s) for their sport. For football, two windows were established: a 45-day window starting with the day after championship selections are made (in FBS, the College Football Playoff), and a spring window from May 1–15. Accommodations will be made for participants in the College Football Playoff National Championship.
Student-athletes who experience head coaching changes, or those whose athletic aid is reduced, canceled, or not renewed, may transfer outside designated windows without penalty.
Transferring student-athletes will be guaranteed their financial aid at their next school through graduation.
September 2 – The Board of Managers of the College Football Playoff voted to expand the playoff from four teams to twelve teams starting in 2026, but encouraged CFP's commissioners to implement by 2024. The model is similar to the one discussed in 2021; the six highest rated conference champions plus six at-large teams would make up the playoff.[15]
October 14 – Conference USA announced that Kennesaw State, currently a member of the FCS ASUN Conference, would start a transition to FBS after the 2022 football season[16] and join C-USA in 2024.[17]
October 19 – Mississippi State announced that freshman offensive lineman Sam Westmoreland had died two days before his 19th birthday. The cause of death was being investigated, but foul play was not suspected.[18]
October 21 – San Jose State freshman running back Camdan McWright was killed when he was struck by a school bus while riding an electric scooter near the university campus. The Spartans' scheduled game for the next day against New Mexico State was postponed and was planned be made up later in the season, however this never occurred.[19]
October 26 - The Big Ten Conference released its 2023 schedules and retained the divisional alignment. The conference is expected to eliminate divisions once USC and UCLA join in 2024.[20]
November 12 – Carlton Martial of Troy recorded his 546th tackle to break the Division I FBS record for most tackles in a career.[22][23]
November 13 – Three Virginia players—junior receivers Devin Chandler and Lavel Davis Jr., and junior edge rusher D'Sean Perry—were killed in a mass shooting in a parking garage on UVA's campus in Charlottesville. Junior running back Mike Hollins and another UVA student were wounded in the incident, which took place as a group of students was returning from a class field trip. Another student on the trip, former Cavaliers running back Christopher Jones Jr., was arrested the next day on multiple felony charges, including three counts of second-degree murder.[24][25]
November 16 – In the wake of the on-campus shooting three days earlier, Virginia canceled its final home game of the season against Coastal Carolina.[26]
November 21 – Virginia and Virginia Tech agreed to cancel their rivalry game, originally set for November 26, in the wake of the UVA shooting. Both teams had already been eliminated from bowl eligibility.[28]
November 30 - The Rose Bowl signed an agreement to expand the College Football Playoff to 12 teams, clearing the way to begin the new playoff structure starting in 2024.[29]
December 12 – Mike Leach in the evening had passed away “from complications due to a heart condition”.[32][33]
December 14 - The UC Regents approved UCLA's move to the Big Ten. Additionally, conditions were made to mitigate athletes such as investing $12 million in beneficial services including nutritional support and charter flights to reduce travel time. UCLA must also pay the University of California, Berkeley an additional $2 to $10 million due to the move affecting the latter's athletic program, with the precise total being made once the Pac-12 completes its upcoming media rights deal.[34][35][36]
One team played its first FBS season in 2022. James Madison started a transition from Division I FCS in 2022, joining the Sun Belt Conference. As a full Sun Belt member, it met FBS scheduling requirements in the 2022 season, allowing it to be counted as an FBS opponent for scheduling purposes and to skip the first year of the normal two-year transition process.[37]
Three other teams joined the Sun Belt from Conference USA in 2022. Marshall, Old Dominion, and Southern Miss, while initially reported to be making said move in 2023, announced their intent to move in 2022. C-USA had insisted that all three were bound to that league through the 2022–23 school year. Following a brief legal dispute,[38] the parties reached a settlement allowing the schools to leave at the end of June.[3]
In addition to James Madison, two other FCS teams started transitions to FBS in the 2022 season.[39] They will not join their future FBS conferences until 2023.
There are 41 team-competitive FBS post-season bowl games, with two teams advancing to a 42nd – the CFP National Championship game. Normally, a team is required to have a .500 minimum winning percentage during the regular season to become bowl-eligible (six wins for an 11- or 12-game schedule, and seven wins for a 13-game schedule). If there are not enough winning teams to fulfill all open bowl slots, teams with losing records may be chosen to fill all 82 bowl slots. Additionally, on the rare occasion in which a conference champion does not meet eligibility requirements, they are usually still chosen for bowl games via tie-ins for their conference.
Number of bowl berths available: 82 Number of bowl-eligible teams: 80 Number of conditional bowl-eligible teams: 1 (New Mexico State) Number of teams qualified by APR: 1 (Rice)[62]
^Despite having a 5–7 record, Rice is bowl-eligible due to having the highest Academic Progress Rate among five-win teams.[59][60]
^Despite having a 6–6 record with 2 wins over FCS teams, the NCAA granted a waiver for New Mexico State to be bowl-eligible due to their canceled game against San Jose State.[61]
Each of these games features college seniors, or players whose college football eligibility is ending, who are individually invited by game organizers. These games are scheduled to follow the team-competitive bowls, to allow players selected from bowl teams to participate. The all-star games may include some players from non-FBS programs.
The Senior CLASS Award, honoring the outstanding senior student-athlete in several NCAA Division I sports, including football, has gone on hiatus. On September 13, 2022, the award operator, Premier Sports Management, announced that it would not present the award until it picks up a new corporate sponsor.[67]
This is restricted to coaching changes taking place on or after May 1, 2022, and will include any changes announced after a team's last regularly scheduled game but before its bowl game. For coaching changes that occurred earlier in 2022, see 2021 NCAA Division I FBS end-of-season coaching changes.
Prior to the season, ESPN signed a sublicence agreement with NFL Network. Select AAC, MAC and Sun Belt ESPN controlled conference games aired on the network as part of the agreement.[103][104] The University of Oklahoma signed an agreement with ESPN+ prior to the season to launch SoonerVision. SoonerVision streams one regular season home game per year as well as the spring football game. Previously these aired on pay-per-view through Bally Sports Oklahoma.[105]
Jason Benetti, formerly working for ESPN, and Noah Eagle, formerly working for CBS, joined Fox Sports as the #2 and #3 college football play-by-play commentators respectively. Benetti replaced Joe Davis, who became Fox's #1 MLB play-by-play commentator.[106][107]
^"ASUN and WAC Renew Football Alliance" (Press release). ASUN Conference. May 18, 2022. Retrieved May 19, 2022. Both the ASUN and the WAC reached the pivotal six-team AQ eligibility threshold with expansion announcements this past academic year. That changed with the November announcement that Jacksonville State (ASUN) and Sam Houston (WAC) would be transitioning to the NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) and joining Conference USA. Both institutions are now ineligible for the FCS Playoffs under NCAA rules.
