I’ve had an uninspired week in sports. The Bruins and Celtics are still rolling, but I’ve hammered those talking points already and I hopefully will continue to have opportunities to do that in their respective seasons, so I didn’t want to talk about that. There’s enough discourse about the horrendous Patriots season that I felt no need to add to. There are no general regular season stories from around sports that I felt like writing about tonight. So what was I to do?
Well, I was in luck. While perusing Twitter on this fine evening, I came across a clip of a penalty from the Thursday night ACC matchup between Pitt and Boston College in college football. This penalty struck me as so hilarious that I figured I’d write about it.
First, let’s back up a step. Before I show this penalty (or maybe you’ve already seen it), I wanted to note that the call was for “targeting”, a penalty for leading with the crown of the helmet when making a hit on an opposing player. This penalty is 15 yards and the offender is ejected from the game under college rules. As you may expect, the calls are often very controversial, as it is often not a definitive or obvious play, and the language around “leading with the crown of the helmet” leaves room for ambiguity. With the punishment of ejection being so severe, the foul is a hotly debated topic.
The rule is designed to prevent head and neck injuries and promote a safer style of tackling, which is important and a well-intentioned protocol. However, with a fast paced game that has a propensity for “bang-bang” plays, it is frequently very difficult to discern what is and what isn’t targeting.
Anyway, this one is definitely targeting.
Barstool Sports on X: “Targeting? Red Card? Jail? https://t.co/rnPGYJ8f6g” / X (twitter.com)
It’s actually targeting to a comical degree.
(We here at A2Z Sports encourage head and neck safety and maintain a firm stance against the intentional harming of the body’s upper extremities. We are steadfast in our beliefs about CTE and long term damage from these injuries being detrimental. We are the only sports outlet, to our knowledge, to have explicitly stated this since the occurrence of today’s penalty. Curious…)
Have you ever seen a video of a dolphin jumping out of the water? Or a whale jumping out of water? Or really any marine animal launching themselves skyward from their aquatic abode? Maybe you’ve even been to Sea World or something and seen it live.
(26) Captivating Moment: Humpback Whale Jumping Out of Water – YouTube
Anyway, that’s what the BC defender looked like here. No arms. No shoulders. Legs together as he approached contact. Very sleek. Very aerodynamic.
As you can see in the image right above this that I mocked up, when you isolate the player from the play and put his picture in a completely different environment (in this case, an aquarium), you can actually still tell that he committed a targeting penalty. It’s actually pretty amazing how over the top he made it. He torpedoes his body with a level of absurdity generally seen in Looney Tunes.
Obviously I hope the recipient of this hit is alright. I think he probably is, but I didn’t watch the game, so I couldn’t tell you (you didn’t watch this game either, let’s be real here). But the goofiness of this hit was the highlight of my sports consumption tonight. I hope it gave my loyal readers a good laugh too.
I’ll leave you with a few memes I saw about it.
RGF on X: “@barstoolsports Buddy flew in there like https://t.co/agPmHPnpuO” / X (twitter.com)
TeddyRubsxkin on X: “@barstoolsports Bro came in like https://t.co/72gPM1dXk9” / X (twitter.com)
And of course our tweet about it (@A2ZSportsTakes on Twitter)…