After a year full of controversy regarding targeting calls in college football (hello, Joey Bosa), the NCAA Football Rules Committee will discuss altering the rules to grant officials more flexibility, the organization announced Thursday.
In 2014, the NCAA established a rule allowing replay officials to confirm or overturn targeting penalties, which result in automatic ejection for the offending player in addition to a 15-yard penalty.
From the NCAA’s announcement:
Committee members plan to talk about whether instant-replay officials should have even more flexibility when it comes to judging whether a targeting foul occurred. Additionally, the committee will consider allowing the instant-replay official to stop the game and enforce a targeting foul that was not detected by the on-field officials.
It’s not clear from the NCAA’s release whether the objective here is to make sure refs never miss a targeting call or to give refs more discretion in deciding what is a targeting penalty or both.
Because while it is important to punish all malicious helmet-to-helmet hits, we’ve seen some calls that don’t make a lot of sense.
In the Fiesta Bowl on Jan. 1, Ohio State defensive end Joey Bosa was ejected for a play that was targeting by the letter of the law but didn’t seem to warrant such an extreme punishment. Ideally, refs should be able to make a judgment call on whether a hit is truly ejection-worthy.
This is what Bosa was ejected for. Unbelievable. https://t.co/BP6eWcxE6S
— SN Ohio (@SN_Ohio) January 1, 2016
The Rules Committee will meet Feb. 9-11 to discuss targeting and other rules.