How Illinois’ “bush league” play overshadowed entertaining Citrus Bowl

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Shane Beamer, Citrus Bowl, South Carolina Football, South Carolina Gamecocks, The League Winners

The No. 20 Illinois Fighting Illini beat the No. 15 South Carolina Gamecocks in the 2024 Cheez-It Citrus Bowl, 21-17. Despite an exciting, back-and-forth contest, the biggest headline was the altercation between the head coaches, Shane Beamer and Bret Bielema. That wasn’t the end of the drama though, multiple times it was obvious the Fighting Illini were purposefully faking injuries. Here is all the excitement and controversy, from the game and everything we learned:

The Citrus Bowl

The Illini capitalized on back-to-back fourth-quarter touchdowns and forced the Gamecocks to turn the ball over on downs in the red zone with the game on the line. Although the 10th win was a big mark for the Illinois program, we have to talk about three controversies in this game that had fans extremely upset.

The Controversy, Part I: Late Substitutions

In college football, if the offense substitutes a player, the defense has the option to do the same. The rule is in place to ensure that the offense can’t make a personnel change and then immediately snap the ball. The problem in this game was that Illinois substituted multiple times a play and in an extremely untimely manner.

Obviously, South Carolina was not happy with this. It forced the Gamecocks to call timeouts to avoid delay of game penalties from the game clock expiring.

This was clearly part of Illinois’ game plan for how to beat South Carolina, because they were continuously doing it. Cameras cut to Bielema grinning while the Gamecocks sideline was upset at the officials, who weren’t doing anything about it.

How Can the NCAA solve this problem?

Instead of taking away the offense’s opportunity to run a play, here are some options for fixing this problem.

Freeze the play clock

Often when the offense substitutes, the defense matches extremely slowly, as was the case with the Illini defense in this game. Despite the officials holding up the play and not letting the offense snap the ball, they continue to run the play clock.

The play clock is there to limit the amount of time the offense has before they start the play, not to see if the defense can waste enough time to draw a five-yard penalty. From the time the defense begins to substitute to when they stop, the play clock should be frozen. That would eliminate any delay of game penalties due to the defense’s lack of hustle.

*Note: This would only take effect if the offense substitutes with 12 or more seconds on the play clock remaining.

Time restrictions

After the offense subs, the defense will have a total of seven seconds to run–not slowly jog–someone off the field, and sprint someone else on in their place. The official will then move out of the way and if they aren’t ready by then, it is on them; the offense will be able to snap whenever they’d like.

You may match – once

When the offense substitutes, the defense may also change players by running one group of players on and one group off. That is it for the officials holding up the play. If you’d like to sub later in the play, you may, but you run the risk of not being in position for the snap.

The Controversy, Part II: Fake Fair Catch

With 3:23 to play in the third quarter of the Citrus Bowl, Illinois got ready to kick off after their second touchdown. The Gamecocks attempted a trick play, where Juju McDowell caught the ball and threw it across the field to Nyck Harbor on the other side of the end zone.

While the ball was in the air, Harbor motioned his arms up but didn’t fully wave his arms, the signal for a fair catch. The officials did not blow the play dead. Harbor returned the ball to the 25 yard line, exactly where he would’ve been if the fair catch was called.

Illinois took great exception to this. However, the fair-catch fake was checked with the officiating crew before the game, who said it was fine as long as the returner didn’t wave his arm, which was the case. They believed that this was a cheap play, but it was really just the Gamecocks trying to catch Illinois napping.

Both instances combined to boil over and lead to the bench’s clearing.

In the video below, Bielema is out on the field attending to an injured player. Instead of talking to the athletic training staff, he walks oddly close to the Gamecock’s bench and sticks his arms out to his sides–a taunting gesture, referring to the Gamecock’s sneaky trick play attempt. Coincidentally, the motion he makes is also the same one the referee makes when they halt the game to let the defense substitute to match personnel.

Beamer’s thoughts

Coach Beamer took exception to this by attempting to charge at the Fighting Illini coach. After screaming and pointing at Bielema for a full minute, the two sides finally settled down.

After the game, Beamer had this to say about the disrespect of the taunt.

“In all my years of being around football, I’ve never seen an opposing head coach come over to the opposing team’s sideline & basically make a gesture towards the opposing head coach… especially not while his player is hurt.”

As for what he believed the gesture was about, he said, “I think he was upset about something we did on the kickoff return, in regards to Juju [McDowell] on the throw back to Nyck Harbor. But I would say he needs to check the rule book because that is something that we cleared with the officials before the game.”

The Controversy, Part III: Fake Injuries

There was another issue with this game, one that unfortunately doesn’t only apply to the Citrus Bowl.

Faking injuries.

Multiple times, Illinois decided to have a player purposefully go down to stop the game. The player would look to the sideline, see they needed to stop the game, and sit down until the athletic training staff came out to do, well, nothing.

After about 20 seconds, the player would pop right up and walk off the field on their own power. It was clearly a routine the team had practiced and told their players they would implement.

What is the problem with fake injuries?

Fake injuries are technically within the rule book. That’s because it is extremely difficult to determine if a player is faking an injury, or they actually require medical attention.  A player acting hurt, is most commonly used on defense to stop the offense’s momentum, though they can also work on offense. They basically act as a free timeout. While it is extraordinarily unethical, some coaches don’t care, and will do anything to gain a competitive advantage.

College football is known for the use of tempo offenses utilize to keep the defense on its heels. In this year’s Citrus Bowl, the Gamecocks were driving multiple times in the hurry-up offense, and the Illini defense was gassed. Instead of calling a timeout, the reason they are in the game, Illinois decided to continuously take advantage of the loophole.

Weren’t other teams doing this too?

Yes, Ole Miss was also heavily accused of having a signal from the sideline for the player to drive to the turf to force an injury timeout. That does not give other teams the right to do the same, though. In the instance below, Ole Miss uses the fake injury on offense.

Should the NCAA care?

Yes. Viewers are extremely upset about this problem. If it continues for any longer, and especially if other teams decide to play this way, they can expect viewership to go down. In turn selling advertisements for less, and making less money. Aside from an economic prospective, this is a problem that could ruin the sport we all love if there isn’t action taken soon.

How can the NCAA fix fake injuries?

Now that we’ve identified why they are such a big problem, there are some solutions to combat fake injuries.

Sit out that drive

If a player is injured, they will sit out the rest of that drive. That seems pretty simple. If you don’t want to keep your players out there, don’t have them dive. If they were injured enough to require medical attention, it might be better for their health to sit out a couple minutes anyways.

This is something that professional soccer already does. If a player is helped off the field, they must sit out until the next whistle, and their team plays shorthanded until then.

A problem with this idea could be that a team sends out a backup player that they mind sitting out the drive to fake an injury.

A forced timeout

A timeout is charged if two or more players are “injured” for the same team on the same drive. Every injury is way too harsh, which is why every other feels like a good compromise. It would be unfortunate if you had two people on the same team legitimately hurt in the same drive. However, if you’re stopping the game for that long you’re going to have to burn a timeout – you have three, you can scarifies one.

*A variation of this could be on the third injury of the drive for the second half because timeouts there matter more, but that might be too lenient.

Delay of game flopping penalties

This would be the hardest to enforce, because it’s asking officials to do a lot to deem if a player is faking. After all, the acting jobs seem to be getting better and better; and well, injuries do happen, its a physical sport.

We’ve already seen the NBA try this by enforcing a technical foul for flopping, but it is extremely controversial. They can be called on the court but could require a video review which would slow the game down just as much.

How the Gamecocks blew the Citrus Bowl

Despite the aforementioned controversies, South Carolina just didn’t do enough in the grand scheme to put Illinois away. And, while those controversies do matter, this is how the Gamecocks fell short.

Houston, we have a problem

The Gamecocks offense couldn’t take off without the Rocket. That is, star running back Raheim “Rocket” Sanders, who decided to sit out the Citrus Bowl to protect himself ahead of the spring’s NFL draft.

Without a vital piece to the offense, the Gamecocks seemed to be stuck when it came to the running game. The leading rusher was North Texas transfer Oscar Adaway III. If you factor out his longest rush of the day, a 36-yard touchdown, he rushed 13 times for 33 yards. That would equal to 1.1 yards per carry. There were multiple third-and-short situations where the Gamecocks would’ve likely ran a read-option play if Sanders were in the backfield.

Offensive line disappoints

Much of the running game struggles can be attributed to a lack of blocking. The offensive line really struggled to get push against the Illini front, which finished with five TFL’s. This is a let down to close the season for a unit that played well and had multiple games without giving up a sack.

Sellers didn’t do enough

Despite being the SEC Offensive Freshman of The Year, quarterback LaNorris Sellers didn’t have his best outing in the Citrus Bowl. He had multiple misses in the passing game, with a multiple overthrows. However, the biggest mistake was an underthrown ball on the final drive of the game to a seemingly open Joshua Simon in the end zone.

Sellers also looked eager to take off and run instead of looking to pass in this contest. That is partially the fault of the receivers, and partially his own fault. It’s hard to give him too much blame for the subpar performance, however, because he didn’t turn the ball over. He also didn’t have an effective running game, something he enjoyed all season.

In all, this is a contest that South Carolina should have won, but came up short. Yet while the game itself was exciting, there may be something the NCAA has to take a look at going forward.

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