Not your house

The last weekend of the NCAA football regular season was really quite interesting to say the least. There were a ton of upsets that would have eliminated a few teams from the championship playoff had it only been four teams but now that it is 12 teams it will only affect where teams will be seeded. Sure there’s a team or two that may have played themselves out of it and into a lesser bowl game but they will get to play another game.

It was rivalry Saturday for a lot of teams that had a chance to play people that they really didn’t like. Well a hated rival needs to be hated or at least not respected, right? I didn’t get to see all of the games on Saturday and when I saw the outcome I was in disbelief. Of course, I had to watch the WSU game until the bitter end and I couldn’t understand how this team played themselves out of a decent bowl game with three straight losses.

If you saw any of the endings to the games on Saturday then you saw how much disrespect can be displayed after an upset victory on the opponent’s turf. When a visiting team wins the game and decides it wants to plant their flag on the home team’s logo in the middle of the field they should have a good idea that it isn’t going to go over very well. Such was the case at several venues around college football on Saturday but none was uglier than Michigan’s attempt of the flag plant at Ohio State. There was a melee and pushing and shoving and punches thrown. An Ohio State player grabbed the flag and threw it. Police interceded and shot pepper spray into the crowd of football players. It was not a pretty sight.

There were other pushing and shoving matches between North Carolina and North Carolina State and Arizona and Arizona State as well as a couple of ‘I don’t like yous’ at the USC-Notre Dame game. Coaches had to intervene to make sure no one got hurt or did any damage.

Later on Saturday the Texas-Texas A&M rivalry was played after an eleven year hiatus. Texas outlasted the Aggies 17-7 and will play in the SEC championship game. After the game there were some Texas players that walked toward the A&M logo at midfield. Head coach Steve Sarkisian walked over to the group and herded the Longhorn players to their locker room. That was a classy move to say we won the game and that is enough for one day. I haven’t always liked Sarkisian for several reasons but he certainly has matured and wants to have a top notch football program and he wants people to respect his team and that is much easier when you win with class.

Getting back to some of the other games when a team plants their flag they want the home team to see that they got owned by the visitor. Now I’m sure a bunch of these kids grew up in the inner city where wearing the wrong colors in a neighborhood could have devastating consequences. So why is it so important to be disrespectful after a football game? I’m sure a lot of it has to do with the fact that everyone thought the victor would lose by 4 touchdowns and instead pulled off the upset. So now they deserve to plant this flag that was brought out onto the field for all to see and the home team players weren’t going to stand their ground? I heard a comment that the Ohio State players fought harder after the game than during the game. That happens sometimes.

I’ve made the comment in the past that players celebrating in the end zone is a bit much as in doing choreographed dance routine, etc. A player should act they have been there before unless of course, that is their first ever TD then I guess a little celebrating might be okay.

After the melees that took place on Saturday I’m sure the NCAA will crackdown on post game flag plants because these types of celebrations are dangerous and adds fuel to a very hot, angry fire in the pit of a young football players belly. So some sort of fines need to be in place to make sure that the game is played fairly on the field and that respect for a hard fought battle be displayed post game.

Win or lose the visiting team needs to understand that this isn’t their house and if they mess it up they may need to clean up after themselves.

— Dale Anderson is a sports columnist from Ritzville. To contact him, email [email protected].