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The NCAA held a rules committee conference call with reporters on Friday about a group of new rule changes, and among them is one that quite literally amounts to nothing. Starting next season, players will be allowed to wear the No. 0 on their jersey, in an effort to cut down on teams having numerous players with single-digit numbers. The rule still needs to clear one more hurdle before it is fully approved. 

Of course, the NCAA didn’t just have a bunch of media members on a large conference call to talk about aesthetic changes to jerseys. There were other notable new rules and enforcements discussed as well. Here are some of the things that were discussed:

Officials will get two minutes to review a play. If a review takes longer than that, the call will stand.Players must be accompanied by coaches during warmups, and the jurisdiction of officials will be moved to 90 minutes before kickoff, back from 60, to prevent pregame skirmishes.The post-targeting “walk of shame” has been eliminated. Players ejected for that penalty can stay on the sideline.A call to teams and players to stop faking injuries

Back to No. 0 now being allowed, though. In addition to giving teams another jersey number to use, it also inadvertently creates a wonderful collection of possibilities for celebrations and trash-talking from players. Think about it: a cornerback wearing that number could use it to represent the number of yards a quarterback, or receiver, will get if the ball is thrown his way. A receiver could wear it to represent how many people can guard him, a nose tackle could wear it to signal how many runs are getting past him, and a punter could even wear it without any real reason because it’d be one of the few things that could make a punter actually look tough on the football field.

It’ll be great when some of these rules collide next season. Imagine the scene when No. 0 on defense flops on one play and gets targeting called against him on the next. 

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