The targeting rule is easily one of the worst ones in college football. It's hard to interpret, it's hard to enforce and it's almost never called and enforced correctly. We have another case of a bad call and enforcement in the Tennessee-South Carolina game.
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The game was already chippy with one Gamecock getting ejected for trying to fight Tennessee receiver Jauan Jennings and he even threw a few punches in the skirmish. However, this call was just bad all around. Jennings goes to meet a tackler head on and drops his head at the last second, which makes it look like the USC tackler was trying to spear him.
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This was called targeting and safety D.J. Smith was ejected from the game. Not only was it the wrong call from the beginning, but the refs could have rescinded the ejection as well upon review, which seems to clearly show Jennings lowering his head rather than the other way around.
That left at least on college football analyst puzzled as to how the whole thing works:
That's not targeting. Jennings ducked his head in to the contact. Thats not the defenders fault. Once again, the enforcement is awful
— Derek Tyson (@DerekJTyson) October 30, 2016
And it's been this way all season too. No ref seems to be able to properly make the call or at least rescind the penalty when they should realize it's wrong upon review.
