The Big Ten may be staring down a discipline call after a hard hit on Bryce Underwood in Saturday’s Michigan-Minnesota game never drew a flag.
With 3:32 left in the first quarter at Huntington Bank Stadium, Minnesota edge rusher Anthony Smith came through on a pass play and laid out the Michigan quarterback as Underwood released the ball. The pass to Andrew Marsh fell incomplete, and the play-by-play credited Smith with a quarterback hurry. No penalty was called.
Michigan had the ball at midfield on 1st-and-10 when the play unfolded out of a no-huddle shotgun look. Underwood threw short to his right for Marsh, and the ball hit the turf near the Minnesota 42.
FOX shared the clip on its college football account and wrote, "Bryce Underwood was just LAID OUT."
The hit appeared clean in real time, but the lack of a flag is what complicates things. Because officials never called targeting, the play did not go through the automatic replay review that follows every targeting flag during a game. That leaves the Big Ten office and Minnesota as the two possible places punishment could come from.
Smith is a 6-foot-6, 280-pound fifth-year player from Shippensburg, Pa. He entered 2026 as the Big Ten’s preseason Defensive Player of the Year after leading the conference with 12.5 sacks in 2025.
College football’s 2026 rule changes added a postgame video review option, and under an experimental rule this season, a first targeting foul brings an ejection with no carryover to the next game. After a second or later targeting foul, a conference can ask the national coordinator of football officials to conduct a video review.
The Big Ten has also handed down its own suspensions under its Sportsmanship Policy. The league previously suspended Northwestern defensive lineman C.J. Robbins for one game and publicly reprimanded him for punching a player during a loss to Northern Illinois.
A similar situation came up one week earlier when USC linebacker Desman Stephens II hit Oregon quarterback Dante Moore as Moore slid at the end of an 11-yard run in Oregon’s 41-27 win at USC. Moore suffered a concussion, officials ruled targeting and ejected Stephens, and USC suspended him for one game the next day.
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