Targeting in college football still confusing and contentious. NCAA says penalty is working

Shamari Simmons came screaming into the backfield, untouched.

On the first play of the fourth quarter of the Big 12 championship, Arizona State’s blitzing safety sacked Iowa State quarterback Rocco Becht.

“Rocco Becht is just blown up, I mean lit up by Shamari Simmons! Human missile to start the fourth quarter!” roared play-by-play announcer Joe Tessitore.

Color analyst Jesse Palmer immediately interjected: “They gotta look at targeting for this, Joe.”

There was no flag on the play, but the replay booth buzzed in for a review as the medical staff attended to Becht. Simmons, a defensive starter, was ultimately penalized 15 yards for targeting for forcible contact to the head and neck area of a defenseless player. By rule, Simmons was immediately disqualified for the remainder of his team’s victory and will have to sit out the first half of the Sun Devils’ quarterfinal College Football Playoff game Jan. 1.

The play is also a prime example of why targeting is one of college football’s most controversial, confusing and hotly debated topics.

“It’s very bang-bang from a targeting call,” coach Kenny Dillingham said a couple of days later. “(Simmons is) such a great kid, and this is about the kids. It’d be unfortunate if a guy who has put in all the work he has — his senior year, who tried to do the right thing, kept his eyes up — loses half of a game that is something he’ll remember for the rest of his life, that he’s worked his entire life for.”

Dillingham raised some valid points. Simmons did keep his head up — it was not the “crown of the helmet” variety targeting penalty — and in slow motion, you can see Becht turn and instinctively lower himself to brace for impact, just an instant before Simmons makes contact. Aside from slowing up or going lower to make the tackle, there’s not much Simmons could have done to avoid that forcible contact to the head and neck area of Becht, who is considered a defenseless player as a quarterback in the pocket.

Still, Simmons and Arizona State did not win their appeal, Dillingham said this week. Targeting penalties are not designed to take into account the intent of the hit, or the significance of the game or the importance of the player. The penalty was created for player safety in 2008, and as far as the NCAA is concerned, it’s having the desired effect.

“I realize this might not be the most popular position to take, and I’m trying not to be overdramatic, but the targeting rule is saving our game,” said Steve Shaw, college football’s national coordinator of officials. “It is truly changing player behavior.”

Targeting penalties have a material impact on the game, levying a 15-yard penalty similar to roughing the passer or unsportsmanlike conduct while also ejecting the offending player, who must sit out the remainder of that game and, if the foul occurs in the second half, the first half of the next game.

It draws the ire of coaches, players and fans alike, arguing it’s excessively punitive, pervasive and inconsistent. If you’re a die-hard fan who anchors on a couch or barstool on Saturdays, targeting feels like the yellow specter looming over every crunching tackle.

To be fair, there have been numerous high-profile matchups this season featuring critical targeting calls or no-calls, and the raw numbers can be slightly deceiving since plays can be flagged and/or reviewed for targeting and not called. But it’s not as prevalent as the outrage suggests. According to Shaw and the NCAA, throughout the 2024 FBS regular season — 863 games — there were 124 targeting penalties enforced. That equals 0.14 targeting calls per game, or about one every seven games.

More important from the NCAA’s perspective is that those numbers have trended down in recent seasons.

Targeting in college football (FBS)

Season Targeting penalties per game

2024

0.14 (approx. 1 every 7 games)

2023

0.16 (1 every 6)

2022

0.16 (1 every 6)

2021

0.20 (1 every 5)

2020

0.27 (1 every 4)

There have been only five FBS players who have accumulated multiple targeting penalties this season, and none of them has been penalized three times, which would result in a full-game suspension. Since the 2022 season, no FBS player has accrued three or more targeting penalties in a single season.

“The average fan would probably say there’s a targeting call in every game, right? And it’s just not the case,” said Shaw, a former on-field official who also serves as the secretary-rules editor of the NCAA Football Rules Committee. “The numbers are going the right way.”

Shaw isn’t ignorant of the reputation.

“Usually when you talk about targeting, it’s all negative,” he told The Athletic. But as the leading voice in college football officiating and someone who has closely tracked the rule’s evolution, Shaw is also adamant that it has benefited the sport over the past 17 seasons.

Targeting was introduced as a 15-yard penalty but became noteworthy in 2013 when the disqualification and replay aspects were added — “When targeting really became targeting,” as Shaw put it. The other meaningful change came in 2019, requiring replay to “confirm” each instance of targeting and eliminating the “stands as called on the field” option that applies to other reviewable plays.

“‘Stands (as called)’ is a good thing for overall instant replay, but we only want to disqualify a player when we can confirm it is targeting,” Shaw said. “If we’re not sure, then it’s an overturn.”

Other adjustments have been made over the years, such as clarifying what constitutes a “defenseless player,” or the change in 2020 that allowed disqualified players to remain on the sideline, eliminating the “walk of shame” to the locker room.

There are two types of targeting calls: penalizing a player for initiating contact with the crown of the helmet (the portion above the face mask), and penalizing a player for forcible contact to the head or neck area of a defenseless player, defined in the NCAA rulebook as a player looking to pass or attempting to make a catch, among others.

The distinctions can cause confusion, particularly for those watching. Officials are trained to look for big collisions — hits that have “smoke,” as Shaw described it — and instructed that when in doubt, throw the flag, because the call will be reviewed and can be overturned if necessary. In the SEC championship between Texas and Georgia, the Longhorns were called for targeting in overtime after backup quarterback Gunner Stockton was hit on a second-down scramble.

Upon review, the penalty was overturned. Stockton was a runner beyond the line of scrimmage and therefore not a defenseless player, and the Texas defender made the hit with his shoulder, not the crown of his helmet. In that instance, the rule worked as intended.

But it’s not always the hits with “smoke” or helmet-to-helmet collisions that get flagged, either, as in an early-season game between Texas A&M and Florida. A Gators defender was penalized after a booth-initiated review for what appeared to be a legal and routine tackle, spearing the backside of an Aggies receiver after the catch, nowhere near his head or neck. But the Florida player launched and made the hit with the crown of his helmet, earning the flag.

“(Crown of the helmet targeting calls are) as much to protect the person delivering the hit as it is to protect the person receiving the hit, because that’s a tackling technique we don’t want,” Shaw said. “We always say to keep your head up, see what you hit.”

Even with the modifications and replay technology involved, there are still shades of gray when it comes to targeting, and officials still whiff on calls. That inconsistency is a leading source of frustration, as in the closing minutes of the Georgia Tech vs. Georgia game on Black Friday. Georgia linebacker Dan Jackson forced a fumble by Georgia Tech quarterback Haynes King on a third-and-1 with what looked to be a crown-of-the-helmet hit. The turnover was reviewed, but there was no mention of targeting.

 

A penalty would have given the Yellow Jackets a chance to ice the game. Instead, Georgia took over on the Georgia Tech 32-yard line and scored five plays later to tie the score, with the Dawgs eventually winning in eight overtimes.

Asked a few days later whether the hit constituted targeting, Georgia Tech coach Brent Key said: “It wasn’t called. But, yes, I believe it was.”

Vexing as they might be, missed or bad calls are an unavoidable part of the game, even with replay. The bigger issue for many coaches and players is the disqualification element. Since being added in 2013, the ejections have been criticized as too harsh or not nuanced enough. Coaches have argued for targeting penalties to be judged based on severity and intent, such as flagrant 1 and flagrant 2 distinctions used in college basketball or something akin to soccer’s yellow and red card system.

“I’ll look everybody in the face and I’ll (say) we’re wrong in college football to throw kids out of games,” Wisconsin coach Luke Fickell said earlier this season, after a win over South Dakota in which both teams had players ejected for targeting. “I’m not saying that taking (hits to the) head out of the game is not what we need to do. Penalize us and things like that. But to throw kids out of the game I think is the wrong thing.”

Shaw acknowledged this is a recurring discussion and something the rules committee — made up of head coaches and administrators spanning all NCAA divisions — looks at closely each offseason. In 2022, the committee introduced an appeal process for second-half targeting calls, which is what Arizona State used for Simmons. It has resulted in a handful of FBS overturns each of the past few seasons, and more at the lower divisions, where instant replay is less prominent. Shaw also noted that though the NFL uses a fine system for unnecessary roughness incidents, the NCAA can’t fine college athletes — “at least today.”

Regardless, the committee has yet to be moved away from disqualification.

“The most important thing to a player is playing time. If you impact that, then that gets their attention,” Shaw said. “If you watch games from before the disqualification rule and then now, it’s amazing the difference you see in player behavior. And that’s the change we need to foster in our game.”

Beyond the declining rate of targeting penalties each season, Shaw cited a study conducted by the Pac-12 Conference, published in the Orthopedic Journal of Sports Medicine in February 2022. The study reviewed 538 games — 68,670 plays — involving Pac-12 programs from 2016 to 2019. Using data provided by team medical staffs, the study concluded that the risk of concussion during plays in which a targeting penalty was upheld was 49 times greater than the risk during all other plays.

The obvious caveats are important: It’s one study, and concussion reporting in college football is an evolving and inexact science. Shaw said the NCAA’s data on in-game concussions has ticked down slightly in recent years, yet is mostly steady, and concussions or other injuries can and do occur on plays where targeting is not a factor.

But for Shaw and the NCAA, it reinforces a belief that the targeting rule, for all its flaws and dissenters, is working.

This weekend, Shaw will tune in for the first round of the inaugural 12-team Playoff, along with millions of other college football fans. He’ll hope for zero instances of targeting, and certainly for no missed calls. But statistically, at some point between now and the national championship, a targeting penalty will occur. A team will get flagged, and a player will be disqualified from the biggest game of his career.

Many will bemoan a subjective, imperfect rule that’s hindering the sport. Others will argue it’s doing just the opposite.

“I get it — most aren’t going to defend or love targeting,” Shaw said. “The bottom line is, it’s something we’re convinced we can’t back away from. It’s too important.”

 (Photo of Arizona State coach Kenny Dillingham: Christian Petersen / Getty Images)



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