Ole Miss running back Matt Jones went on the field in Saturday’s game against Kentucky with what appeared to be a fake injury, drawing criticism from ABC announcers during the broadcast.

“Luckily Matt Jones survived and walked off the field,” game manager Sean McDonough said sarcastically during the game. “Just an obviously faked injury.”

In fact, in the moments before Jones fell to the turf, the cameras showed Rebels quarterback Jaxson Dart apparently pointing at the tailback to fall down to delay the game.

College football rules analyst Matt Austin confirmed that the NCAA’s rule book does not directly prohibit feigned injuries, so officials have no way to punish the act.

“There’s actually nothing in the rulebook that says you can’t do that,” Austin said.

“There is very strong language about it being unethical to feign an injury at any point during the game. I know the rule makers have talked about this several times, but at the moment there is nothing in the book that can be done about it.”

Kirk Herbstreit also recently described the practice of faking injuries as “unethical as hell.”

“This is college football. “It drives me crazy,” Herbstreit said during the game.

“You look over after a big play and all of a sudden he looks over and just goes down. It’s not necessarily against the rules, but it’s unethical as hell. When you look at the whole thing compared to these speed violations, the guys just fall under the quotation mark “injury.”

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