When it comes to the written law of college football, Ryan Day sees a couple of areas where the sport could evolve.
In a conversation with Joel Klatt of Fox Sports on "Big Noon Conversations," Day and Klatt discussed Day's coaching career, Ohio State and the current landscape of college football – a topic that included the head coach's frustration with a couple of critical on-field rules.
The topic started when Klatt asked Day to name which on-field rule he would change instantly. Day had an answer locked and loaded.
"Hash marks," Day said. "I would go to the NFL model. I think (college football) hash marks were built for football a long time ago. I think the NBA has made adjustments, and college basketball has made theirs by moving the three-point line. They've made adjustments, but we haven't. And I think today, with the type of athletes we have, they're faster, bigger and more powerful. Putting the ball in the hash mark puts everybody in a smaller area of the field. We're not playing to the numbers of the field. I think putting the ball in the middle of the field – more like in the NFL – would open up the entire game."
Klatt, surprised with Day's answer, responded, "I thought for sure we're about to get into targeting there," referring to the controversial overturned targeting call when Georgia safety Javon Bullard delivered a helmet-to-helmet strike to Ohio State wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr. in the Peach Bowl, knocking Harrison out of the contest with a concussion.
"Too soon," Day said. "Too soon."
No targeting was called for this hit on Marvin Harrison Jr. The Ohio State receiver was taken to the sidelines after and is being treated by medical personnel. pic.twitter.com/rSIo0ZRe2M
— Eleven Warriors (@11W) January 1, 2023
Still, Klatt, who believes the targeting rule initially achieved its intended purpose but has since become an inconsistent issue, asked Day to share his thoughts on targeting and how he would alleviate the problem moving forward.
"It has to be common sense," Day said. "We're getting too much into the weeds on this that we've lost where we started on it. And what was the reason we did this? To protect young men. If someone is launching at someone's head and they're unconscious on the ground, that's not what we want here. Sometimes we get into these slow-motion things, and we get so caught up in the little details. It's not realistic, sometimes, watching it in slow motion. I think there has to be common sense.
"I think we have to trust the referees on the field and what they see. They are there for a reason. If it's egregious one way or the other, then that's where instant replay comes into play. But I think right now we've done is, we've just put so much into the instant replay that what you see in a slow frame isn't really what's going on in the field. And we have to go back to the common sense of why the rules were even put in place."
In April, the NCAA made three changes to college football: clocks will run after a first down except in the final two minutes of either half, teams may no longer call consecutive timeouts and penalties at the end of the first or third quarter will carry over to the next quarter instead of resulting in an untimed down. However, it did not amend the targeting rule.
With the 2023 season less than 50 days away, it appears unlikely that it will, which means Day will have to wait for 2024 before any tweaks could change the current officiating process for targeting.
