Why NCAA backed off college football targeting’s harshest punishment

The NCAA ’s recent spate of college football rules changes have ranged from mundane (a proposal to force leg coverings failed), controversial to downright spooky (“ghost transfers"). Perhaps of most noteworthy this fall is a one-year trial run with changes to the sport’s targeting penalties. Passed March 19 by the NCAA’s Division I Football Bowls Subdivision Oversight Committee, an initial targeting penalty in the coming 2026 season does not require a player to miss time in his team’s subsequent game.

The previous iteration of the targeting rule required a player who was ejected for the foul in the second half of a contest to miss the first half of his team’s following game; it even could carry over from one season to the next year. However, NCAA officials and representatives from member schools studied changes to the game from previous modifications to the rule and learned no player during the 2025 season was flagged for three targeting penalties. Overall, the NCAA said, the penalty also has declined in frequency “I believe the discussion had been for a while the severity of this penalty, and we think the rule has demonstrated (the game) has really responded,” Greg Burks, Big 12’s Coordinator of Officials, told USA TODAY Sports.

“The number of targeting penalties has gone down. The plays we saw, the head-hunting we saw in the past, you just don’t see anymore. “The safety factor was driving the rule and was the impetus and that kind of has come to fruition.

” The NCAA’s national coordinator of officials, longtime SEC referee and officiating head Steve Shaw, shared with the group the results of the study that showed “only a very few” players received multiple targeting penalties during the 2025 season. The Big 12, Burks noted, did not have a single player whistled twice for the foul. If the trend-line reverses direction with these rules modifications and more players become multi-time offenders, mandatory suspension remains in the rulebook.