We lost a starting corner for the remainder of the Rice game, and now first half of the next game due to "Targeting". I understand that the idea is to protect players, but I just don't know how you are to play in the secondary if you can't hit a crossing receiver. If the guy doesn't catch it, you are screwed. Our guy hit the receiver square in the chest with his shoulder. No helmet contact at all... Ejected. The Rice player later tweeted that he thought it was a good football hit... didn't agree with the call either. I guess it's time to teach DB's to destroy player's knees. I foresee a rash of injuries like what occurred to Marcus Lattimore. Here's the hit in question:
That was a good ol' fashioned, clean, hard hit. Head up, hit into the chest (shoulder?) and take the guy down. What's the penalty???
It's not a ******** rule. It's a sensible rule, designed to eliminate the thug element of head hits. What's BS is the early calls by refs who are knee-jerk reacting. There's no question the hit above was not headhunting. The tackler clearly led with his shoulder to the chest of the receiver. How can a referee not see that? I saw a hit on the passing QB tonight in the Colorado-CO State game that was clean but initially called a headhunting hit. When it was reviewed in the booth that call was negated, but they enforced a late hit penalty anyway, which was BS. It's going to be a problem, not because of the rule itself but because of the BS way it's being called in SOME instances.
In every game there are bad calls. The more rules the more bad calls you get. Why don't they just have a rule for unnecessary roughness. Oh wait, they do.
One of the top plays of last season was Jadevon Clowney's hit in the Outback Bowl. Officials say that that was targeting and Clowney would be ejected for that now. I'm sorry. I say ********. http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/9503660/jadeveon-clowney-hit-michigan-lead-ejection-2013
I don't have a problem with the spirit of the rule. But they have emphasized it SO MUCH... that we get what you see above. It was such a lame call... Coach Sumlin challenged it. And the booth upheld the call.
That's a problem on top of a problem, if the booth does not have the kahones to overturn a wrong call. I agree that the refs are looking for anything that resembles headhunting, however remotely. That is just plain wrong.
I think you're all right. (not that anyone asked my opinion). Sid is right in that the rule is solid in foundation for the safety of the player. Mike's right in that sense that these officials are such cowboy dipshits, they can't handle the rules that they have now.. giving them another one with a rather broad interpretation of what's right/wrong is asking a bit much. One thing I've noticed about officials, or really most anyone, is that they have to inflate their sense of value. It's not absolute, but it's prevalent. It's where we get bad cops come from. It's involved anywhere you have a position of ruling authority. That doesn't mean all are bad, but probably more than half. It doesn't make them bad people. It makes them human. You give these guys a new rule, and history has taught us this repeatedly, and you leave any level of interpretation to it at all, then they will run wild with it for all sorts of reasons that actually are reflective of the individual not the rule.. As Sid pointed out, that's on the person, not the rule. As Mike pointed out, we already had a rule that covered that. That's the problem, really, We live in a day of robotic precision yet it's a human game that is played and officiated by humans. Humans are capable of incredible precision and incredible idiocy. Not to get all Clintonian on you, but it is what it is.
ps while I agree with Scott about that being a terrible call, IMHO, the worst targeting call of the weekend was the one that involved the player sliding down at the last second. While it was helmet to helmet, there's no way it was targeting.. or even a penalty. If we're going to have this safety rule, then we should abolish the slide.