Lance Leipold calls out officiating in his thoughts on Bangally Kamara targeting ejection

The targeting rule in college football is one of the most heavily debated and seemingly inconsistently called rules in the sport. That came home to impact the Kansas Jayhawks on Saturday when linebacker Bangally Kamara was ejected in the second half against Cincinnati.

In the moment, the ejection led to a very emotional reaction from Bangally Kamara. The sixth-year senior was seen on the sideline throwing his helmet. For Kansas head coach Lance Leipold, it was a borderline call.

“Hard to see from my point,” Lance Leipold said. “I really haven’t seen enough of it.”

The targeting wasn’t initially called on the field. Instead, it was buzzed down from the booth to review. There, they’d go in and find that it fit the criteria for targeting. With that, of course, comes the controversial penalty of an ejection. Since that ejection occurred in the second half, it also means that Bangally Kamara is going to miss the first half of Kansas’ next game.

For Lance Leipold, the issue is how common the hit that got called happens without being called. In that, he’s seeing an increase in targeting calls, which leads to those harsh ejections. That was exacerbated by the game being tied at 27 with just over four minutes remaining in the third quarter when the call was made.

“The interpretation for me is, I don’t know if this gets me fined or not, but Colin [Becker] will cover it. They said ‘head and neck area.’ Shoot, you can see that on a lot of hits in the pocket if it’s in this area. So, I don’t know. It was unfortunate. Obviously, it wasn’t called on the field — it was called from up above, so I don’t know. I really thought that we had gotten into a lot better spot calling targeting,” Leipold said. “And now it seems to kind of have reverted itself back to being a lot more frequent than where it was a year or so ago.”

Bangally Kamara was a three-star recruit out of Akron (Ohio) East High in the Class of 2020. At the time, he was the 46th-ranked safety and the 632nd-ranked player overall in that recruiting cycle. He’d spend the first four seasons of his college career at Pitt, before spending 2024 at South Carolina, and then making the move to Kansas for his sixth season.

This year, Bangally Kamara has 19 tackles in four games. That includes five tackles for a loss and 1.5 sacks. He’s also defended a pass and has a forced fumble.

Kansas would go on to drop the game to Cincinnati in a thriller. With that, Leipold saw his team fall to 3-2 on the season and 1-1 in Big 12 play. They’ll need to hold down the fort defensively next week as they travel to Orlando to take on UCF.