The NCAA football rules committee met earlier this week to discuss how to improve how some penalties–including targeting–are called, reviewed an enforced.

Here are some changes the proposal would bring to various rules:

Player safety

  • For targeting, officials will be able to review how the contact took place, if it was incidental and whether or not the offending player launched into the other player.
  • Replay officials will be able to call blatant targeting penalties after the fact, if they are missed by the officials on the field.
  • For any player who leaves the tackle box, a penalty will be enforced if he blocks a player below the waist toward the starting position of the ball.
  • A player who slides feet first while in possession of the ball will now be considered defenseless.
  • Deliberately tripping a player carrying the ball will be a penalty.

Ineligible receivers

  • Nothing new was proposed for this rule, but officials were instructed to enforce the standing rules more stringently, especially the 3-yard limit.

Technology

  • The use of tablets, laptops and computers will be allowed in the coach’s box and in the locker rooms, but they will not be allowed on the field during games.

There has been concern about replay officials spending all of their team searching for targeting penalties, but NCAA coordinator of officials Rogers Redding gave assurances that only obvious penalties would be called from the replay booth.

“It’s not the case that on every play the replay official is going to scan the field to see what happened,” Redding said.

A new replay system will also be a possibility for the upcoming season. The SEC has requested a chance to experiment with a centralized replay system, such as what is currently being used by the NFL.

“This is the necessary first step and we will now further engage our membership to determine if and how we will implement this experimental opportunity,” SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said. “We look forward to communicating with other conference offices to discuss the most appropriate and effective implementation of collaborative replay.”

The enforcement of the 3-yard limit has garnered a great deal of complaints from defensive coaches, which is what pushed officials to make changes in its enforcement in the middle of the 2015 season.

“We jointly made a decision…to continue to have the umpire be primarily responsible for the ineligible receiver down field, but then give secondary responsibilities to the head linesmen and the line judge,” Redding said. “Those are the officials on the sideline who are right on the line of scrimmage.

Remember, these are not yet enforceable rules. These proposals will be sent for approval to the playing rules oversight panel early next month. If they are approved, they could be put into effect for the 2016 season.