College Football Angst Watch 2024: Week 14 (Brawl!)
The State of Angst
Several different rivalry games ended with postgame fights this past Saturday when sore losers took exception to the winners planting a flag at midfield. The fights ranged in intensity from “mean word shouting” to “brawl that burnt itself out and then cops made it worse.”
The North Carolina State Wolfpack beat the North Carolina Tar Heels in the Tar Heels’ stadium, 35-30. When a group of Wolfpackers (is that what you call them?) tried to plant their flag at midfield, a North Carolina wide receiver, J.J. Jones, swiped it and tossed it into the sideline. A scrum formed after what was arguably J.J.’s best play of the day; his final statline was 3 receptions for 19 yards and 1 tossed banner.
Down in Florida, the Florida Gators beat the rival Florida State Seminoles in the Seminoles’s building. After losing 11 games this year, you would think the Seminoles would be numb to another loss, but State’s head coach, Mike Norvell, spurred Florida’s head coach during the postgame handshake. The Gators erected a flag at the 50-yard line. A scuffle ensued and Norvell grabbed the Florida flag and threw it aside.
It was, by far, the best pass all season by anyone representing Florida State University.
Arkansas and Missouri also got into a scrum at the end of their game, but as I understand it both teams just kind of stood there and yelled stuff at each other and there was no physical contact of any sort. But it feels notable because it’s how everybody outside of Arkansas and Missouri found out that Arkansas and Missouri is a rivalry game. There’s a trophy and everything. It’s crazy.
Meanwhile, down in Ohio, the 2024 Michigan Wolverines, a team which struggles with basic concepts like blocking, tackling, and 2+2=4, somehow pulled off the funniest upset in the history of all sports ever played anywhere in the universe and beat the Ohio State Buckeyes—the second highest rated team in the sport and a three touchdown favorite—by a score of 13-10.
You can guess what happened next. Michigan went to the 50-yard line and planted its flag, and then sore losers appeared out of nowhere like they were Viet Cong ambushing a Marine Corp platoon. Michigan’s kicker and punter and their backups got together and made the O-H-I-O sign.
The pushing and shoving and throwing of hands took place over a dozen different smaller entanglements rather than an all encompassing melee. Both coaching staffs got into the midst of things and broke up scuffles. There was one notable exception to this: Ohio State’s head man Ryan Day just stood off to the side with shellshocked expression rivaling Thomas Lea's The Two-Thousand Yard Stare. His only contribution to the scene was asking “what happened?” to someone sprinting past him, and ignoring him.
As the fighting was dying down, an as-yet-to-be identified police officer deployed pepper spray, catching Ohio State athletes, Michigan athletes, and members of the media in a lachrymator cloud. Thank you for your service, Officer Dingus, whoever you are.
This confluence of events started a meta-debate about who should be credited with “instigating” the fights. Is it sore winners planting their flag or the sore losers who suddenly remembered they must defend their home turf after failing to do so for sixty minutes of game time?
A variety of sanctimonious media commentators argued that flag planting ought to be banned. Paul Finebaum suggested on the Dan Patrick Show that someone could be hurt or even killed because of flag planting. Gus Johnson, a generally entertaining play-by-play commentator, clutched his pearls especially hard while covering the Michigan-Ohio State game.
“Now there is some skirmishes on the field! An unsportsmanlike gesture by Michigan,” he said with an overemphasis on every single syllable characteristic of a sports commentator. “It’s! Unnecessary! They! Won! The! Game! No! Need! To! Be! Disrespectful!”
Other television personalities saw fit over the course of Saturday to argue that both sides are to blame. You shouldn’t plant flags, the logic goes, and you shouldn’t get into fights over the planting of flags, unwittingly suggesting an order of magnitude to the significance of the offenses.
For its part, the Big Ten conference issued $100,000 institutional fines to Michigan and to Ohio State, saying in a statement that “not only did the actions of both teams violate fundamental elements of sportsmanship such as respect and civility, the nature of the incident also jeopardized the safety of participants and bystanders.”
I am biased, but this is all quite silly. College football is theater. Planting a flag on the field of a vanquished foe is just another tool in the repertoire. It strains credulity to suggest flag planting somehow crosses moral lines when the entire sport is premised around the idea of ‘beat the shit out of the guy with the ball.’
The fighting, on the other hand, is not good and should be discouraged—the only sport where fighting is allowed is hockey because boxing looks very silly when it’s on skates. But the fracuses that transpired on Saturday are emphatically not a sign of society in decline. They are just a sign that some people “gotta learn how to lose,” as Michigan running back Kalel Mullings said.
Yes, it may be hard for some to believe, but you can get a flag planted on your field and be normal about it. Texas and Oregon both planted a flag at Michigan Stadium when they won their games there. The Wolverines did not charge at them and start fighting like they’re in Mortal Kombat 4. They went back to the locker room. Because they’re normal people.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers Quarterback Baker Mayfield is credited with coining the flag planting tradition in 2017 when, as the QB of Oklahoma, he led his team to victory over the Ohio State Buckeyes in a highly anticipated matchup and planted an Oklahoma flag in the center of Ohio Stadium.
“OU-Texas does it every time they play,” Mayfield said in a press conference following his game on Sunday. “It's not anything special. You take your L and you move on.”
This year, when the Texas Longhorns beat Oklahoma, some Longhorns planted a flag at midfield by driving it through Mayfield's jersey. When asked for comment, Mayfield whipped out pepper spray and shot a Texas player in the face.
I’m kidding. He was normal about it. Mayfield responded at the time by saying he was “just a kid from Austin, Texas” who played for Oklahoma, beat Texas twice, and has since been living “rent-free in their heads for almost a decade.”
This makes Baker Mayfield the most sane person living in Florida.