Unfair punishment

Cody

What do they expect?

University presidents, athletic directors, alumni, boosters, sports writers and announcers have called the conduct of the Clemson and Carolina football teams in the brawl near the end of Saturday’s football game “deplorable,” “inexcusable,” “inappropriate” and “reprehensible.”

These are the same people who send the messages that demand the same teams win “at any cost.”

They pay coaches astronomical salaries and then fire them when the wins don’t outnumber the losses — and sometimes even when they do.

They offer bonuses to the coaches for trips to bowls. They spare no expense in getting the biggest, baddest players to wear their colors. They build multimillion dollar stadiums to allow more and more fans — who spend hundreds of dollars for the privilege — to see the teams do battle.

The players are fully aware of what is expected of them. “Playing” — and winning — before upwards to 100,000 screaming fans each Saturday in the fall is the culmination of weeks, months and years of mental and physical conditioning.

Football players are taught early on that the ones who hit the hardest and run the fastest will be victorious. The guy across the line of scrimmage is the enemy. With each snap of the ball they are expected to hit him as hard as is physically possible and knock him to the ground.

When this is done, the fans cheer wildly. Devastating hits draw deafening roars.

In practices, coaches chastise those players who do not hit hard enough and embarrass them in front of their teammates for being soft.

Off the field, friends, family members and fans either congratulate the players for last week’s big win or chastise them for getting whipped.

In a rivalry game, they hear it all year long. It never stops.

Football is a violent sport. Very violent. How many times have you heard a player being described in glowing terms as an “animal?”

How can any clear-thinking individual expect these “animals” to turn their emotions off and on like a light switch? When the ball is snapped the football player’s job is to hit his opponent as hard as he possibly can — immobilizing him if possible.

Live action might last eight seconds. When the whistle blows, signaling a halt to hostilities, that same player is then expected to do the sportsmanlike thing and help his enemy up off the ground. A few seconds later he tries once again to knock him down. Over and over these mini-battles continue.

How many times can anyone be expected to perform in such a civilized manner?

Remember, after the “big” hits players hear the thunderous roar of approval from the fans. Coaches greet the hitter with shouts of encouragement and teammates dance and prance.

But what about the guy who took the hit?

He gets up somewhat shaken and vows to himself that he will be the hitter on the next play.

He’s heard the crowd. He’s seen the high-fives and the dancin’. He wants to get even.

He has been trained for years to hit first and hardest. He knows everyone saw him get nailed. He knows he’ll hear about it from friends, see it in pictures and on film and read about it in the papers — especially if his team loses the game.

Any thought of sportsmanship is gone. He wants to get even. Somehow, some way. Then something happens on the field that ignites him. A cheap shot. Or even a perceived cheap shot. He reacts by delivering a cheap shot of his own. A player from the other team sees it and in turn reacts. Others see bits of what has happened and rush to defend their comrades.

That is what happened Saturday at Clemson.

How can any rational thinking human expect something like that Death Valley brawl not to happen.

I’m not making excuses for those involved. I’m just saying I understand how and why, which is a lot more than some of the holier-than-thous are doing. I wonder how many of them ever played the game?

Fights during football games — and basketball games for that matter — have been going on all over the country since the game was first played. They will continue. This one wouldn’t have drawn near the attention it has had it not been for the NBA incident in Detroit involving fans and players.

A few players would have been suspended and that would have been that. But in the rush to be politically correct, the powers-that-be have decided to decline bowl invitations.

Personally, I don’t believe either team is good enough to deserve a bowl bid in the first place, but that’s immaterial. The players on both teams who had little, if any, involvement in the brawl are being punished unfairly. The coaches are being punished unfairly.

And most of all, the fans are being punished unfairly.

If both teams had finished the season with better records and were headed to upper tier bowl games, would the same decision have been made? Maybe. Maybe not.

But I’m not arguing so much with the decision not to go to a bowl game, but with the attitudes taken by those who made it and those who have reported it.

Given the nature of the game and the pressure to win at any cost, what do they expect?

(Cody Sossamon is publisher of The Gaffney Ledger. You can contct him via e-mail at cody@gaffneyledger.com)

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LEDGER PUBLISHER