Herbstreit Is Right: The Targeting Rule Is Failing the Film Room Test
It’s Tuesday afternoon, the lights are off, and the hum of the projector is the only sound in the room. You have the clicker in your hand, rewinding a play for the fifteenth time. You freeze the frame right at the point of impact. Your free safety is looking at you, waiting for instruction on how to make that tackle legal next time.
And you don't have an answer for him.
That is the reality of the current targeting rule in college football. It isn't just a frustration for fans screaming at the television; it is an operational failure that makes coaching defense nearly impossible. Kirk Herbstreit pointed this out recently on the Crain & Cone Podcast, and he hit on the exact anxiety that keeps defensive coordinators up at night: nobody knows what a catch-all penalty looks like anymore.
Herbstreit, who has called more high-stakes snaps than just about anyone, admitted that even he relies on officiating expert Bill Lemonnier to survive the broadcast booth. "I’ll think, 'That’s targeting,' and he’ll say, 'Nope, that one’s not targeting,'" Herbstreit said. "I just give up on what it is."
If the men paid to analyze the game in slow motion can't agree on the definition, a 20-year-old linebacker moving at full speed doesn't stand a chance. The rule, implemented in 2008 and armed with the automatic ejection in 2013, was designed to change behavior. Instead, it has introduced a randomness to the game that feels less like player safety and more like a lottery.
The "Forcible Contact" Trap
Herbstreit specifically targeted the rulebook's language regarding "forcible contact." It’s a phrase that looks good in a boardroom but falls apart on the hash marks. "I want you to show me some contact on a football field that isn’t 'forcible' when you have pads on," he noted.
He's right. You cannot legislate the physics out of a collision sport. When you penalize the intensity of a hit rather than the mechanics of it, you put officials in the impossible position of judging intent through the lens of impact. The result is inconsistency that varies from crew to crew, and even from the field to the replay booth.
A Basketball Solution for a Football Problem
There is a mechanical fix available, one Herbstreit has advocated for decades: the Flagrant 1 and Flagrant 2 model used in college basketball. Under this system, incidental or technical violations would result in yardage penalties, while malicious, weaponized contact would trigger the ejection.
"It’s obvious when a defender launches and uses his helmet as a weapon," Herbstreit explained. "We all look at that and know what it is."
Separating a technical failure from a moral one is basic management. Ejecting a player for a shoulder that slipped three inches high during a bang-bang play is a disproportionate punishment that alters the competitive balance of games. The NCAA is reportedly discussing changes to make the penalty less punitive for the 2026 season, and they should look hard at the basketball model.
Until the rulebook reflects the reality of the speed of the game, coaches will keep freezing that film on Tuesdays, clicking back and forth, hoping the Saturday officiating crew sees the play the same way they do. Right now, that's a gamble no one wants to take.