Targeting Rule Costing SEC Teams Key Defenders and Draws Complaints

Hmmm....it's been an interesting early round of college football games with a couple of SEC defensive football players getting booted from their respective games due to the new NCAA "Targeting" rule.

That rule says it's an automatic penalty and ejection for any player who leads into a tackle with his helmet and hits an opposing player in the helmet.

If you skim through the Twitter world, there's outrage over a play in the UGA/Vanderbilt game that cost Georgia arguably their best defensive player.

Check out Ray Drew trying to pull back on hitting Vanderbilt QB Austyn Carta-Samuels:

Check out this Tweet about the play from former NFL Referee and current FOX Sports anaylist Mike Pereira:

Ejection of Georgia player has to be reversed!!
— Mike Pereira (@MikePereira) October 19, 2013

The South Carolina Gamecoks aren't exactly thrilled with the rule either as they lost Safety Katdetrix Marcus early in the 1st quarter of their game vs. Tennessee. Marcus was filling in as an injury replacement himself.

The idea behind the rule is understood. The NCAA is trying to protect players by getting them to stop head-hunting...or leading with their helmet with the intent to injure opponents.

However in the case of the Drew play, it's pretty obvious there was no intent to injure anyone. Marcus's play, we saw on TV but don't have a clip to show you of it. Suffice to say, it was a little closer to the intent of the rule, but arguably he didn't appear to be trying to injure anyone either.