Football rules have drastically changed over the past few years to protect players from suffering brain damage as well as increased death rates on the gridiron. The numerous reports—and a Hollywood film to boot—about football-related concussions leading to CTE, plus the series of in-game deaths of high school football players last year should be more than enough to convince you why these rule changes are necessary. If not, then this vicious helmet-to-helmet hit during the Miami of Ohio-Iowa game from Saturday afternoon is an ample opportunity for you to change your opinion.
During the first quarter of the game, No. 17-ranked Iowa's Desmond King caught the ball for a punt return and Miami of Ohio's Matt Marimee ran to tackle him. As Marimee lost his footing and began to fall over while chasing King down the field, King's teammate Josey Jewell came out of nowhere like a freight train from Marimee's right side for this nasty full-speed head-hunt that looked like Marimee could have been decapitated.
Here's another the clip below with commentary and the officials' ruling of the play:
Jewell was subsequently ejected from the game for targeting, and luckily Marimee was able to get up and walk off the field with some help from the Redhawks training and coaching staff.
The fact that Marimee had no way of catching up to King after noticeably tripping himself up should have given Jewell enough sense to let him fall on his own. Iowa ended up winning the game 45-21, and Marimee's head is hopefully recovering well from his bell being rung very loudly from that ruthless hit.
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