A year ago, Auburn opened its 2015 season with a 31-24 victory over Louisville. With the win, though, came a rule change for the 2016 season.

Steve Jones, of The Courier-Journal, recapped the final minute in the Tigers’ victory.

“Up 31-24 with the ball and facing third-and-2 in U of L territory, Auburn ran for 8 yards and what would have been a game-sealing first down,” Jones wrote in his article. “But the Tigers were called for holding with 52 seconds left, so they had to run third down again. While the clock was stopped and the penalty yardage was being marked off, Petrino made what seemed like a puzzling decision to burn his last timeout. Why, after all, would you use a timeout when the clock was already stopped?

“But as it turns out, under last year’s rules, the officials had informed Petrino that the game clock was going to restart once the ball was set – not on the snap – and Auburn would have been able to run off nearly all of a 25-second play clock.”

Essentially, teams now holding a lead can’t purposely commit penalties to burn the clock at the end of games. Coaches are now given an option to keep the clock still after penalties are committed and resuming play once the ball is snapped, as opposed to having the clock run once the ball is set down by an official.

During Thursday’s ACC Kickoff, ACC Coordinator of Officials Dennis Hennigan said this new rule has been added nationally this season.

“(That Louisville play) was our impetus to send in the rule-change proposal,” Hennigan told The Courier-Journal. “… What (the new rule) does is it gives the coach of the team that’s behind the option to say, ‘I want to start this clock on the snap after you administer the foul.'”

Going back to the Auburn-Louisville game, after Petrino’s timeout, Auburn ran for short yardage on third-and-12 and then threw a pass in the air on fourth-down to run out the clock. Under this new rule, Petrino could have kept the clock from running because of the holding penalty, saving his timeout to use on third down, which would have forced Auburn to punt.

Hennigan told The Courier-Journal of people assuming Petrino had made an error a year ago, that “That couldn’t be further from the truth as far as what I saw.”