Joel Klatt obliterates targeting rule in college football: 'One of the worst things we do in our sport'

The first week of the college football season wasn’t without a targeting controversy. Michigan linebacker Jaishawn Barham was ejected for a hit against New Mexico that many felt was clean. Or at least unavoidable.

And that Barham will now have to miss the first half of this week’s Oklahoma game — his ejection for targeting occurred in the second half against New Mexico — does not sit right with some. FOX Sports analyst Joel Klatt was apoplectic over the ruling.

“Listen, I can’t stand the targeting penalty. The targeting call in college football is terrible,” Klatt said on The Joel Klatt Show. “It’s one of the worst things that we do in our sport, in particular attaching an ejection automatically to a penalty like that and that carrying a suspension for the next half of football, which in many cases like this one, is going to be the first half of the next game.”

Michigan appealed the penalty to Jaishawn Barham, but the first-half suspension was upheld by the NCAA. He will sit against the Sooners for the first 30 minutes.

Klatt broke down the tackle in detail on his show, outlining how it should not have been a targeting call to him. He went on:

“Jaishawn Barham goes in, he turns his head to the side,” Klatt said. “He makes head-to-head contact with the quarterback but certainly didn’t target the head of the quarterback and wraps him up as he’s taking him to the ground. If anything we should be suspending the right tackle for throwing such an atrocious block.

“Barham gets a clean look at the quarterback. He turns his head. Does he make contact up high? Yes, he does. Letter of the law is that technically contact against a defenseless player? Maybe. Maybe. But it has to be forcible. And in this case with the wrap-up, I think it was the wrong call. That’s the wrong call. I don’t understand what we want the defender to do.”

Klatt broke down why he has such issue with the college targeting rules as written. The rules are overly broad, in a way.

“That is a bad call, No. 1,” Klatt said. “I think that letter of the law, I can understand why it was called. But here’s the issue with the penalty in general, writ large, not just that one specifically. The fact that we don’t have two different categories of targeting is a massive fail in college football. And the adults in the room have got to fix that.

“It’s totally asinine that that play from Jaishawn Barham carries a suspension for the next game the same as a targeting where someone is literally lowering their head, using the crown of their helmet and trying to spear someone and injure them. Those are two totally different things. Barham is making a football play and wrapping up the quarterback while his cheek happened to contact the head of a defenseless player, the quarterback who’s in a passing posture, who gets defenseless player protection.”

The FOX Sports analyst was not done there. Not by a long shot.

He went on to call out the governing body in the sport for not being more proactive about making tweaks to the targeting rule. Jaishawn Barham was just the first example, but there will likely be others this season.

“Why are we doing this?” Klatt said. “We’ve already changed the way defenders are playing. We’ve already done that. If you want to call a penalty during the game for a play like Jaishawn Barham on the quarterback there of New Mexico, you know, I don’t love it, but OK.

“But throwing him out of the game for that is egregious. And it’s got to change. It’s dumb. It’s always been dumb. And the people within college football need to fix it. But you know what? They’re spineless. The rules committee is totally spineless when it comes to the targeting call, and the reason is because they’re just afraid of litigation.”