The Jadeveon Clowney hit from last year’s Outback Bowl was the essence of football. Ball flying one way, helmet the other. Game changer. Love it, right?

But would that hit even be legal this season?

"The play that won an ESPY was an ejection in my mind," said Dick Tomey, the retired Hawaii, Arizona and San Jose State coach who will be an analyst for Rainbow Warriors games this fall. "Everyone has to change, including the media. What they replay and what they ooh and aah about."

Tomey’s not getting soft. He just knows times have changed and so must the game.

Football must adapt or die. Well, maybe not die, but at least go underground like dog fighting and bare-knuckle boxing, or other activities deemed too barbaric for the mainstream. Kind of hard to hide Alabama-Auburn and 101,000 fans in a backroom though.

But, if you delete the most dangerous mucous-knocking, how many fans do you lose?

College football is leaning toward safety with some serious rules changes about the way people can hit each other.

If you launch your body, hit with an upward thrust, strike or spear or lead with the crown of the helmet, there’s a good chance you will be flagged for targeting, and done for at least the rest of the day.

"This year the penalty can be very costly to the player and the team," veteran college football official George Gusman said. "If you get called for targeting you’re disqualified."

And if it happens in the second half, you’re out for the first half of the next game, too.

Everyone’s getting a heads up about keeping your head up. Wrapping up, head to the side, too. This shouldn’t be too difficult to coach and learn; just get an old Football 101 textbook and it’s right there, how to tackle effectively and safely.

Changing rules is one thing. Hearts and minds is another.

The big hit — dangerous or not — often serves as a momentum-changer in an emotional, physical sport. For many fans it is what attracts them to the game, as much or more as a long touchdown pass.

"The traditionalists are going to struggle with what’s coming down," Gusman said. "The game of football is under attack. Either it changes from within or it will be changed from outside."

Medical research, litigation, chronic injuries and even suicides of former players give football no choice but to change, even at the risk of losing fans. If it doesn’t, it will eventually lose its players.

"There will be so much information about the dangers that for a parent to let their child play would be crazy," Gusman said.

It’s been drilled into us that our guy drilling into their guy is a beautiful thing. Whether it was done too dangerously has been open to interpretation, usually skewed by allegiance.

If you’re a Fresno State fan, that concussion-inducing whack by linebacker Marcus Riley in 2007 on Colt Brennan was a thing of beauty, and legal. Hawaii fans see it differently. There wasn’t even a flag on the play. Six years later it could merit ejection.

"(The call) might be different today," Gusman said. "But please don’t put us in a box."

Wouldn’t dream of it. The officials’ jobs were already hard enough. Now they must be even more precise in policing the brutality of a sport based on brutality.

Reach Dave Reardon at dreardon@staradvertiser.com or 529-4783 or on Twitter as @dave_reardon.