Rule passes: teams won't be penalized 15 yards when officials overturn targeting penalty sources told ESPN
— Brett McMurphy (@McMurphyESPN) March 6, 2014 2014’s most obvious news: NCAA dropping review-proof 15-yard targeting penalty
Well, I mean, yeah.
If you’re just now joining us: yes, the NCAA enacted a rule for 2013 that penalized (and ejected) players for helmet-targeting hits. The ejection was reviewable, but the penalty was not, making scenarios like this one ...
Ole Miss penalized 15 yards for not targeting.
— SB Nation CFB (@SBNationCFB) October 13, 2013 ... not just plausible, but common.
Steve Shaw, the SEC’s director of officials, said on a mid-October conference call that 15 of 52 FBS targeting ejections had been overturned, making for 225 yards worth of free gains for offenses to that point. Considering Week 1 had three overturned ejections and that 15 figure would work out to about two per week, we can estimate FBS saw about 30 targeting penalties stand after review found them to not be penalties at all. That would be 450 yards gifted to offenses.
The thinking behind making the penalty impervious to correction is that other penalties can’t be overruled, so why should one be special? Of course, other penalties don’t trigger automatic reviews to see whether they’re actually penalties or not. So anyone who thought things through realized when the rule was adopted that it would make a right mess on the field in 2014 -- especially since officials were instructed by conferences to err on the side of penalizing.
Players must be safer. The automatic ejections portion of the rule is and was essential. This is an act that should never be followed by its actor continuing to play football. But the unvoidable-exchange-of-territory portion of the rule was both overthought and underthought, and it's a fine thing it's being corrected.
Also, never forget that Georgia’s Ray Drew was ejected for this hit, judged by many to be the most ridiculous ejection of the year -- not just flagged, but ejected:
There’s nothing the rule can do about officials who’ve convinced themselves that quarterbacks have eggshell-like skulls in their shoulders, unfortunately.
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