Opinion: Faking Injuries Needs to Stop

Football is a sport in which players are bound to be injured sometime in their career, most of the time earlier than later. Even some of the best players get injured frequently, such as JJ Watt who plays for the Huston Texans or Kenan Allen who plays for the Los Angeles Chargers. When these players get hurt the natural reaction is for the stadium to get quiet, and then for everyone to clap in respect of the player, and hope he is okay.

The problem now is that players are starting to use "injuries" as a strategic tool for their team to win the game. It has not been more prominent than in the Florida State versus Virginia Tech, where whenever FSU got any momentum, magically there was a Virginia Tech player "hurt," which causes a delay for the game.

This happened on multiple occasions in the game, such as when Nyqwan Murray an FSU wide receiver, caught a slant pass and took it down to inside the Virginia Tech fifteen-yard line and when FSU tried to run the hurry-up offense there was a Virginia Tech player lying on the ground.

Another occasion when this happened, was early in the fourth quarter when FSU running back Cam Akers broke loose for an 84 yard gain, and again a Virginia Tech player lied down on the ground injured to stop the momentum. The intention was evident because the Virginia Tech player always came back into the game the next play.

If the fake injury situation repeats its self in a game, the NCAA needs to take action and make the team committing the malicious actions pay. Their needs to be some penalty for doing this, and it should be extremely severe, because of how severe a topic it is. Injuries can be life-changing moments, such as Ryan Shazier's injury., so to use injuries to your advantage is a cruel action.

The big question about this situation is how to tell whether the injury is real or strategic. There is no clear answer to this, but the best way to view this is situational.

For instance, In the FSU example, it is clear the injuries were just for strategic purposes since the Virginia Tech players got right back on to the field one play later after coming off. On the other hand, if the player clearly gets hurt and is in pain, the obvious reaction should be to clap for them in respect of hoping they feel better.

No player that is actually hurt will go into the game the play after they come out, because that is just not possible with the "injuries" the trainers say they have. Everyone should at first clap for the injured player out of respect, but if it gets repetitive and clear that the other team is faking it, then it is time to start calling them out on it.