USC linebacker and top tackler Cameron Smith got kicked out of Monday’s Rose Bowl after a targeting penalty for a hit on Penn State quarterback Trace McSorley. It’s unfortunate to see a player disqualified from the Rose Bowl, but the call here was pretty cut and dried, and officials got it right.
Here’s why this USC hit in the Rose Bowl was targeting
The rulebook makes this one pretty clear-cut.
The play:
Smith meets all the necessary criteria for a targeting penalty.
From Rule 9, Article 4 of the NCAA’s football rulebook (emphases mine):
No player shall target and make forcible contact to the head or neck area of a defenseless opponent ... with the helmet, forearm, hand, fist, elbow or shoulder.
The rulebook defines a defenseless opponent, among other things, as, “a player in the act of or just after throwing a pass.” McSorley has just done this, certainly.
McSorley is defenseless, then, and Smith is definitely making forcible contact to the head, with the head. He doesn’t hit McSorley with the crown of his helmet — an automatic targeting foul if there’s enough force — but he’s guilty because he’s hitting a defenseless player hard and in the head.
Smith commits one of the NCAA’s key targeting indicators: a “launch,” which the NCAA calls a “player leaving his feet to attack an opponent by an upward and forward thrust of the body to make forcible contact in the head or neck area.”
Targeting carries a mandatory ejection, so Smith had to be thrown out.
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