BYU Football Countdown: Player 41 – Ahead of his time
By Adam Gibby
The start of the BYU Football season is only 41 days away.
Yesterday new rules were announced for the upcoming College Football season. While there doesn’t appear to be any drastic changes such as fair catching a kickoff or introducing a new kind of rule that will drastically change the game, the rules changes will make a difference.
The first two have to do with targeting. Personally, I believe that targeting is killing the game of football both at the college and NFL level. Players are afraid to hit now and that often leads to offensive players actually able to break more tackles. The new rules says that if targeting is called on the field it will either be confirmed or overturned. There will be no grey area. If there is any question as to whether it is targeting or not, the play will be overturned. This should keep quite a few players in the game now and allow players to play more.
The second rule change goes along with that closely. If a player gets a third targeting penalty in the same season not only will they be kicked out of the game they are in, but the entire next game.
The final rule change is one that I believe will have modifications in the years to come. The rules says that there will be a penalty if a player is blocked on their blindside. While the plays that will likely be penalized the most for this are plays where a defender is blindsided twenty yards behind the play, there is still quite a bit of grey area here.
Today’s player in the countdown played during a time when there were almost no rules other than tackle and score.