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- The NCAA is exploring a possible change to one of its worst rules
- High-ranking figures around college football are hoping to alter the policy that requires any player hit with a targeting penalty to be ejected from the game
- Read more football news here
In 1997, the American Academy of Neurology published a paper exploring the long-term ramifications that come with succumbing to the kind of concussions that are practically unavoidable in sports built on a foundation of impossibly muscular athletes routinely colliding with each other at high speeds.
Three years later, two experts revealed the results of a survey of over 1,000 former NFL players that highlighted a practically indisputable link between the brain trauma they suffered over the course of their career and the neurological issues stemming from those injuries. It would take the league over 15 years to stop denying reality before instituting new rules designed to minimize hits to the head, but in 2017, the organization finally implemented targeting rules inspired the those put in place by the NCAA around a decade prior.
The NCAA’s targeting policy is a textbook example of “better in theory than in practice.” In 2013, the governing body of college sports attempted to crack down on dangerous hits even harder when it adopted a new policy that made every targeting penalty accompanied by a mandatory ejection for the player who committed it, which has resulted in some athletes getting the boot over some incredibly suspect calls.
Thankfully, it looks like reason may finally prevail. According to Sports Illustrated, coaches, officials, and administrators around college football have begun to explore a possible change to the policy that could be put in place as soon as next season that would remove the ejection mandate and allow refs to use their discretion when it comes to the severity of the punishment they dole out for targeting.
There’s no telling what will happen when everything is said and done. However, it seems like the most popular solution comes in the form of a two-tier system that’s been proposed by the American Football Coaches Association, which would “create a Targeting 1, which would result in only a 15-yard penalty” compared to “Targeting 2, a more malicious hit with intent to strike an opponent’s head, which would carry a 15-yard penalty plus the standard ejection.”
It might not be perfect, but it’s certainly an improvement.