I Went to a Fight and a Game Broke Out

I know most of us are already sick of hearing every Tom, Dick, and Harry talk about the various fights that went on this weekend, but I can't help putting my two cents in. Despite the constant talking, I still don't know how the whole thing really got started (ie. what started the fight between Artest and Ben Wallace). I just know that both teams broke up to calm down, the cup of fluid came down and then all hell broke loose.

Ultimately, fault does lie with Artest. Yes, fans should not be breaking the plane of the field, but even then, you can't go up into the stands. Now, if the fans come on to the field, then anything is legal. The two Detroit fans who walked onto the court got what they deserved. I personally enjoyed Jermaine O'Neal's clocking of the second fan as he tried to get up. You could see the man's face contort as he laid his fist in. Still, nothing excuses the original incident of heading into the stands. I imagine Detroit police will be doling out several fines for the throwers but arrests will be reserved for the court walkers I think.

One other interesting note is how things got shown on the Today Show this morning. They were discussing the punishments handed out and all they talked to were Detroit Piston's fans. In fact, one hot dog vendor went so far to say that he felt everything was fair except for the 6 game suspension that Ben Wallace got. He felt that was too harsh. I can't imagine why. And we wonder why the exit polling results were skewed.

Regarding the second fight of the weekend, I would go ahead and say that most of the fault lies on Clemson's side. I don't know which player it was, but a Clemson player pulled a very cheap shot on the South Carolina quarterback while he was down. Frustrated about being down, the SC linemen took exception to this and the fight broke out. It was interesting to see Lou Holtz out there trying to break it up. The sad thing is that the Clemson players were ones more at fault, they reacted non-shallantly by blaming the Indiana-Detroit fight for saying it was okay, and its probably the SC players who are going to get punished more. Lou Holtz will come down like the insane hammer of God that he is and Tommy Bowden will probably dismiss the whole incident as excess energy. We'll see but I'll just go ahead and chalk this up as another reason to dislike the entire Bowden clan.

On the other end of the spectrum, there were some good games this weekend. I watched a good portion of the Ohio St.-Michigan game, the Florida-Florida St. game and the Utah-BYU game. All three were quite entertaining and it helped that the team I was rooting for in all the games won. If Tressel can survive the NCAA investigation that's coming down the pipe, I think Ohio St. could be good next year. They still don't have that much of a running game, but the quarterback looks good and most of the defense will be returning next year. Tressel meanwhile is gaining more and more standing to getting his own street named after him in Columbus (Woody Hayes has a street named after him) with the National Title and beating Michigan 3 out of 4 times so far.

So, this is how things stand so far. Auburn did not score enough boku points with the voters to move up to the no. 2 spot. So assuming they beat Tennessee in the SEC championship game, Oklahoma beats Iowa St. in the Big 12 championship and USC beats Notre Dame next week, the bowl picture is looking like this:

Orange: USC vs. Oklahoma
Rose: Michigan vs. California
Sugar: Auburn vs. (Miami/Virgina Tech)
Fiesta: Boston College vs. Utah

The Sugar Bowl picks ahead of the Fiesta Bowl, but if Oklahoma goes to the Orange, then the Fiesta Bowl gets to pick the replacement pick and will take Utah. The ACC winner is yet undetermined and will be decided by the Miami-Virginia Tech game. The Fiesta will probably cut its loses and go with the closer favorite of Utah and then settle for getting stuck with BC when the Sugar Bowl picks the ACC winner ahead of the Big East winner. I don't know if BC has fully secured the Big East title but I think they are fully in the driver's seat.

Stuart Mandel has his projections for the Bowl games here. He's obviously taking Virginia Tech to beat Miami in the head to head. I guess its being played at Virgina Tech. He also has Ohio St. going to the Alamo Bowl as the Big Ten #4. I thought Northwestern was ahead of them and that they were going to be playing Oregon St. in the Sun Bowl, but I guess I was mistaken. I do like that he's projecting Bowling Green to get selected for the Silicon Valley Bowl, assuming the beat Toledo tomorrow, even though they can't win the MAC Championship. We should start seeing the invites before too long.