The NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel this week approved a number of proposed college football rules changes for 2020, including a tweak to the targeting rule. Beginning this season, players ejected for targeting will no longer be required to leave the bench area and can remain on the sideline with their teams. All other aspects of the targeting rule remain unchanged. In addition, a two-minute guideline for instant replay reviews has been installed. Reviews are not required to be completed in two minutes, but simply “as efficiently as possible.” Also, if time is put back on the clock at the end of a half due to a stoppage for replay review, the half is over if there are less than three seconds remaining. This rules tweak is apparently in response to the final play of the first half of the Iron Bowl, when Auburn kicked a field goal after one second was put back on the clock due to replay review (Auburn beat Alabama by three points in the game). Duplicate numbers are now limited to two per roster, with the continued stipulation that players wearing the same number must play different positions and cannot be on the field at the same time. However, players are now permitted to wear jersey number zero. Finally, game officials’ pre-game jurisdiction has been extended to 90 minutes prior to kickoff. Previously, officials had not authority prior to 60 minutes before kickoff, resulting in a number of altercations between players during pre-game warm-ups.
In addition, a two-minute guideline for instant replay reviews has been installed. Reviews are not required to be completed in two minutes, but simply “as efficiently as possible.” Sweet "guideline"
Aubs standing in the way of rational, sensible change. Tubbs didn't have to reach far to find that voting base.
If he were that efficient, he’d have had the pick-6 outlawed because those really BF’ed him in that game
Let's not change targeting to a flagrant 1 or 2 type system, let's keep the ejected player on the sidelines so cameras can tune to them 50 times.
Make someone who leaves field with "injury" be out the rest of the drive instead of one play. Should slow down some of it
Are they going to do something about lineman blocking down field on passing plays, that should be a priority. They should also adopt the NFLs rule regarding targeting. Dont throw a kid out of the game for targeting
Not sure it needs to be even that punitive because a QB could have wind knocked out of him, need to come out, then be good in a play or two but have to sit the rest of the drive. Make it 3-4 plays or something. Still not worth faking it with anyone who is good.
ah yes, the NFL, with its stellar history with respect to brain injuries, should be the model for efforts to curtail dangerous hits.
This doesn’t really address whether it does any good to eject a kid. I think a conversation about whether it should be a flagrant 1/2 situation makes sense. It’s a somewhat judgment call but targeting kind of already is anyways.
So many of the targeting penalties seem to happen by chance where a player moves at the last second and ends up getting struck in the head. At full speed idk how you're supposed to avoid some of them. I'm not saying it shouldn't be a penalty but I think the majority of them the player shouldn't be thrown out of the game either.
Tie ejections to incidental vs intentional or wanton conduct. Imagine something like that would make things better generally.
Didn’t see anything from 2020 to confirm the prior year’s findings, but 2019 data gave pretty good evidence that upping penalties for targeting reduced the number of occurrences.
But people have been ejected for it since it's been a penalty. And now we can change the call in the booth.
I’d rather see the ejection implemented after two strikes; whether that’s done per game or during a set number of games. Immediate ejection seems way over the top on a lot of the targeting hits that happen these days.
In 2019 they added a one game suspension for multiple targetings in a year. That led to a 30% decline in penalties (after years of increases in the penalty being called as the NCAA continued to broaden the ability of replay officials to enforce it). If there was 30% margin to cut in just one year, that’s pretty strong evidence that there’s a lot of reckless tackling that actually can be removed from the game to benefit player safety. The rules also already incorporate intent into the last penalty decision, so your fix is emphasizing what you think the problem is - that officials are penalizing hits that lack the intent of making forcible contact with the crown of the helmet or to the head or neck of a defenseless player. We don’t have good data to compare between 2012 and 2013 with regards to ejectable hits but it’s crazy to me that, with all the evidence we have about brain and neck injuries, people are so up in arms about the penalty.
“The foul requires that there be at least one indicator of targeting (See Note 1 below).” Note 1: “Targeting” means that a player takes aim at an opponent for purposes of attacking with forcible contact that goes beyond making a legal tackle or a legal block or playing the ball. Some indicators of targeting include but are not limited to: • Launch—A player leaving his feet to attack an opponent by an upward and forward thrust of the body to make forcible contact in the head or neck area. • A crouch followed by an upward and forward thrust to attack with forcible contact at the head or neck area, even though one or both feet are still on the ground. • Leading with helmet, shoulder, forearm, fist, hand or elbow to attack with forcible contact at the head or neck area. • Lowering the head before attacking by initiating forcible contact with the crown of the helmet.
There is a difference in penalizing a player for incidental contact to the head and ejecting and suspending them. Sometimes people forget these are kids too, and they make incidental and accidental mistakes on calls which are largely based on judgement.
Thank you for emphasizing that more referee discretion doesn’t solve any perceived problem with the rule as written or its penalties.
It does if you're allowing them to uphold a technically correct targeting call but clearly something that wasn't malicious. That bullet point #3 isn't really about intent at all.
We've all watched way too much football. If you can't tell that refs frequently feel compelled to call targeting even when it's clearly not intentional or malicious then we're not watching the same game. Give them an out to call it but not throw a player out.
None of the bullets do. The intent part comes from “take aim at an opponent for purposes of attacking with forcible contact that goes beyond making a legal tackle or a legal block or playing the ball.” And it absolutely shouldn’t have to be malicious, reckless hits to the head and neck need to be addressed.
The punishment for targeting should be that your best player gets pulled and your worst player is forced to go in. I want to see more teams shoe-horned into the Willie Taggart approach.
They're citing intention as the definition of intent to make a "legal tackle" in their definition of what isn't a legal tackle. 0/10 stupid rule construction.
There are something like 10-12 targeting calls across the entire FBS per week. The idea that there is a serious overenforcement problem is nonsense.
That's on the low end 120ish games players don't get to play in. You take out ~8% of a person's season it needs to be for good reason. Like what if we started ejecting players for 2.5 games in CBB for a flagrant 2? Or even a flagrant 1?
Good reason: minimizing the risk of brain and spinal cord injuries by demonstrably changing player behavior. If you assume that 1/3 of sustained calls are actually just accidental collisions caused by the offensive player lowering his head, then your problem (which again, really is a problem with replay official judgment, not the rule) is .03% of all player games over the course of a season. Again, not a real problem in contrast with head/neck injuries, which are of low incidence (excepting CTE, which I would agree can’t just be the result of hits that should be called targeting), but exceedingly high consequence.