I’ve recently binge-watched Netflix’s “Last Chance U” about a Mississippi Junior College football team. I’ll spoiler exactly what happened but you’ll be able to get the gist of it from the rest of the post. Unfortunately, I don’t see anyway around this.
[spoiler]EMCC (the protagonists of the series) were about to play their final game of the season. If they were to win, they would go on to the playoffs and possibly contend for a national championship. The team they were scheduled to play, Mississippi Delta, was 2-6. This was to be their last game no matter what.
Bad blood existed between the schools before the game started. The EMCC coaches warned and warned again and warned some more that Delta would try to get EMCC to come unglued. Delta, it was said, had nothing to lose.
The EMCC coach had a well deserved reputation for running up the score. In his defense, he claimed (I haven’t verified it) that margin of victory was one of the determinants of who would go to the national championship. True to his reputation, up 48-0 and with less than a minute left in the first half, EMCC called time out in order to force Delta to punt. On the following play after the punt, an EMCC receiver caught a pass in the flat and was targeted by the defense. A flag was immediately thrown. The receiver got up and pushed the targeter. A fight broke out. The play happened near Delta’s sideline and the Delta bench players quickly started fighting the 11 EMCC players that were on the field. Any player from EMCC (or Delta for that matter) that left the sideline to fight would be declared ineligible to play in the next game. From the video of the fight, you can see that Delta had EMCC players on the ground and were kicking and stomping on them. The EMCC players could see it as well.
Knowing what would happen, the EMCC coaches tried in vain to stop their bench from taking the field. After a long time (security was totally ineffective), the fight was eventually stopped. The coaches were called to the middle of the field. The game was stopped and suspensions were handed out. EMCC was out of the playoffs.
IMO, the rules should be changed regarding leaving a bench area to fight. If you have teammates that are vastly outnumbered and are in danger of serious bodily harm, you have a moral obligation to help them out. The team whose players left the bench first are the ones that should be suspended, not both team’s players.
Agreed that the rules seem like crap. Maybe some lawsuits on behalf of injured players beaten while their teammates were forced to watch might spur changes.
By the way, I looked at EMCC and they have some good alumni. LaGarrette Blount and my team’s Jarran Reed stand out.
Up 48-0 and you’re calling timeouts to force a punt? When you know the other team has nothing to lose and there’s bad blood? It’s like EMCC coaches wanted a fight. I hope it wasn’t their first string still on the field after they had a 6 (almost 7) touchdown lead.
That doesn’t justify the targeting by Delta. It doesn’t justify a fight after a flag by Delta. It doesn’t justify Delta clearing their bench. It doesn’t justify kicking and stomping by Delta. They were clearly in the wrong.
But that doesn’t EMCC wasn’t in the wrong too. That’s like Bruce Willis wearing a sandwich board with a racial slur while walking through Harlem. That EMCC coach knew what was going to happen and decided to rub Delta’s noses in it. Now his players are suspended and the team isn’t gong to the playoffs. Hope it was worth it.
EDIT: I don’t know if it was a home or away game, but if the blood was that bad, security should have been higher. You wanna fight, join a boxing league.
Agreed. And this was going into halftime! They should have just let the clock run out to avoid injuries. Having stopped the clock and forced a punt, back on offense they should not have been passing the ball at all. Coaches fault for setting up their players to fail.
I’ve had some time to cool down over the stupid, stupid coaches.
The real issue is that you want to prevent the bench-clearing in the first place. That’s why the rule is “No fighting”. If you make the rule “No fighting unless you really need to” you’ll see a lot more brawls and a lot more injuries.
This game is a great example of a needed change to the rules, but not the rules about brawling, the rules about coaching.
I disagree. If you clear the bench to join a fight, you should be punished, even if 9a) you don’t actually throw any punches and (b) “but the other team started it!”. Maybe the punishment for just clearing the bench is a little harsh - I can go with ejection, but having to sit out the first half of the next game (even if the fight took place in the first half) is pushing it if you weren’t actually fighting.
You would think that the players would know better, given that a penalty for clearing the bench exists in high school football as well as college (and there is one in basketball as well.
As for it not being “fair” to a team if it can’t “defend itself” when the other team clears its bench, well, too bad - let’s see how many of their players are left in the game after the fight. (The only rules I can find in the NCAA rule book concerning a minimum number of players are, the kicking team must have at least nine on a kickoff, and on all other plays, the offense must have seven on the line of scrimmage at the snap.)
If you have 11+ guys in the hospital because most of your players sat on the bench while the entire opposing team stomped them into paste then you might as well drop out of the tournament anyway. I doubt they’d have enough quality backups to compensate.
If you clear the bench then sure, the tournament’s over but at least you don’t have college kids with careers (or lives) cut short with gruesome injuries.