Hit on Owusu impacts rule
SEATTLE — Upon further review, the kind of helmet-to-helmet hit that a UCLA player leveled Stanford’s Francis Owusu with last week should now be considered a personal-foul targeting penalty, the NCAA said Friday.
Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott said Stanford head coach David Shaw’s angry complaint about the hit led the NCAA to act quickly rather than waiting until after the season.
“David deserves a lot of credit for raising the issue and pressuring us to raise the issue” with the NCAA, Scott said. He said he was “delighted” the NCAA was “able to be so nimble and move so quickly.”
Earlier this week, the Pac-12 had backed up the officials’ non-call against Tahaan Goodman because, like the officials, it interpreted NCAA rule 9-1-3 as prohibiting contact with the crown, or very top, of the helmet. The conference agreed with the officials that Goodman didn’t use the crown of his helmet.
The NCAA, however, said Friday that the crown of the helmet is the entire portion of the helmet above the face mask.
“It seems that some officials have been interpreting the crown of the helmet to mean the tip-top portion of the helmet only,” NCAA football secretary-rules editor Rogers Redding said. “We want everyone to understand that the crown of the helmet starts from the area above the face mask to the dome of the helmet.”
Shaw commended NCAA and Pac-12 officials for making the change. “This is phenomenal. … That hole in the rule book got filled in,” he said.
Shaw complained after the game that even though Goodman didn’t use the top of his helmet, he should have been called for targeting. Owusu sustained a concussion and missed Friday night’s game at Washington.
After making a catch for 17 yards in the second quarter of the Cardinal’s 22-13 victory over the Bruins, he fumbled when he was hit by Goodman. UCLA’s Adarius Pickett recovered.
UCLA then marched to a field goal. Had Goodman been flagged, he would have been ejected, and it would have been Stanford’s ball at the UCLA 10. The Cardinal would have had a chance to take a 10-7 lead. As it turned out, they won the game with two touchdowns in the final 24 seconds.
“The initial contact was helmet-to-helmet,’’ Shaw reiterated Monday. “It’s not what we want. It’s exactly what we say we don’t want.”
Scott said the game officials were correct in making the non-call based on the previous interpretation of the rule. “Having said that, when we saw the hit, we said that’s what we’re trying to get out of the game,” he said.
He said it was unusual for the NCAA to make such a ruling in the middle of a season. “It’s a substantive difference,” he said. But added, “At this point, we don’t really care.”