Penn State football lost freshman LB Abdul Carter to a targeting call that had college football Twitter in midseason form bemoaning the controversial rule.
The return of college football is great. We get to bask in the brilliance rivalry, school pride, chaos and unpredictability.
Unfortunately, it also means the return of one of the most misguided rules in sports: Targeting ejections.
Every year, teams across college football get screwed by overaggressive calling of the targeting rule, which results in an automatic ejection.
In their season opener against Purdue, it was Penn State on the wrong end of the first terrible targeting call of the season.
Penn State linebacker Abdul Carter ejected for targeting
Targeting remains a poorly written and terribly implemented rule in college football. The ejection in the Penn State-Purdue game is a complete joke.
Outside of headhunting airborne receivers (ejections for that absolutely), perhaps we should remember this is tackle football.
— Jeff Rabjohns (@JeffRabjohns) September 2, 2022
Freshman Abdul Carter was making his debut for the Nittany Lions when he went after a loose ball on an incompletion. It wasn’t a late hit after the whistle. It was a football play with incidental contact to the head.
The refs ejected him for it.
Twitter went after them and the rule for it.
A stupid Targeting ejection. College Football is now back!
— Big Cat (@BarstoolBigCat) September 2, 2022
I forgot how much I absolutely DESPISE targeting.
The sideline referee doesn’t even blow his whistle to signal incomplete before Abdul Carter makes the hit. And now he’s out of his first ever game at Penn State.
Targeting is the worst rule in sports. pic.twitter.com/6LmioWURvs
— Ben Stevens (@BenScottStevens) September 2, 2022
Targeting remains a poorly written and terribly implemented rule in college football. The ejection in the Penn State-Purdue game is a complete joke.
Outside of headhunting airborne receivers (ejections for that absolutely), perhaps we should remember this is tackle football.
— Jeff Rabjohns (@JeffRabjohns) September 2, 2022
Targeting such a bullsh*t call and penalty in CFB. Freshman trying to make a play and gets the boot. Just BS
— Brian Linder (@SportsByBLinder) September 2, 2022
Targeting is complete bullshit if you aren’t headhunting an airborne receiver.
Lots of the media eats this nonsense up. It’s a rule created to pretend the sport cares about safety intended to limit liability but doing little to actually make the game safer.
— Bud Elliott (@BudElliott3) September 2, 2022
Is there anybody that thinks targeting calls and ejections for playing football the right way is a logical solution. This is absolutely ridiculous.
— AQ Shipley (@aqshipley) September 2, 2022
Protecting players from head injuries is a noble aim. But ejecting players for incidental contact while playing the game in the most basic ways is taking it all a football field’s worth of steps too far. It doesn’t have to be this way.
There are tons of ways to fix the rule. Allow referees to award a penalty without an ejection. Make the ejection based on clear intent. Or make it an ejection after two infractions.
Anything would be better than the way the rule is currently applied.
Things didn’t exactly go smoothly for Penn State in general on Thursday night. They trailed Purdue late in the second quarter in a dud of an opening half for their season.
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