Forde-Yard Dash: Ways to Curtail Flag-Planting and Postgame Melees

Rivalry Week turned into Brawl Week with a number of teams inciting extracurricular activities after marking their territory on their opponent’s field.

Michigan football players plant their team’s flag at midfield following their win over the Ohio State Buckeyes. / Barbara J. Perenic/Columbus Dispatch / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Forty names, games, teams and minutiae making news in college football, where portal season is overlapping with the playoff drive. First Quarter: Eleven Teams for 12 Spots. Second Quarter: Ryan Day and the Coaching Carousel. 

Third Quarter: Put Away Your Flags and Simmer Down

Conference offices were busy dishing out fines and reprimands Sunday and Monday, after Rivalry Week turned into Brawl Week. Four ACC schools (21) were fined and reprimanded—the North Carolina State Wolfpack, North Carolina Tar Heels, Virginia Cavaliers and Virginia Tech Hokies. And more infamously, the Michigan Wolverines-Ohio State Buckeyes fiasco (22) earned both programs six-figure penalties from the Big Ten. (There also were a lot of burning eyes, after cops opened up a pepper-spray onslaught of the combatants. The Dash took a mild, secondhand hit. It doesn’t taste very good.)

There were other situations elsewhere, including intraconference flare-ups between the South Carolina Gamecocks and Clemson Tigers, then the Florida Gators and Florida State Seminoles. The most creative fracas sprang from a provocative pitchfork planting (23) after the Arizona State Sun Devils routed the Arizona Wildcats. Throw in Nebraska Cornhuskers captains refusing to shake hands with Iowa Hawkeyes captains at the coin toss, and we pretty much ran the gamut of disrespect.

It was enough to motivate Army Black Knights athletic director Mike Buddie (24) to publicly thank his program, school and fan base for playing the game without the garbage.

A Thank You message from our Athletic Director Mike Buddie heading into Friday Night's AAC Championship. pic.twitter.com/F4umrSL54P

— ArmyWestPoint Sports (@GoArmyWestPoint) December 2, 2024

Not many rivals out there last weekend winning or losing with class. It was embarrassing for the sport, which turned its best week into a succession of quién es más macho melees. That, of course, then gave way to a bunch of fan rationalizing about how the Other Guys are terrible and Our Guys did nothing wrong.

It was, in a word, juvenile.

This will lead to a lot of administrative discussion about how to avoid future brawls, which is necessary. Hopefully college leaders will arrive where The Dash is on this subject:

The problem we have here is a visiting team double standard (25).

In the event of a home-team victory and potential field storm, detailed protocols are in place in virtually every conference to usher the defeated visitors safely to their locker rooms. Failure to do so—or even to keep fans off the field, period—can lead to hefty fines.

Now here’s the double standard: When the visitors do the winning, there seems to be an increasing expectation that they own the opposing venue and can cavort as they please. Planting flags and mocking the home fans is considered a natural byproduct of victory. 

No. Visiting teams need to go to the locker room and avoid confrontation, just the same as they’d like safe passage there in event of a loss and a mass of humanity rushing the field. The game is over, the victory in hand, congratulations—now please leave happily and without inciting violence. Failure to do so should have consequences.

Everyone seems to really like their flags in college football. Running them into a stadium makes a nice visual on TV. They get the fans in the venue fired up. And carrying them around/waving them gives cheerleaders and/or mascots something to do.

But planting those flags in the middle of your biggest rival’s home field—immediately after defeating said rival—is a purposefully provocative act. Michigan apologists immediately tried a whataboutism defense after the throwdown in Columbus, pointing out that the Texas Longhorns (26) ran their flag to midfield and planted it in the Big House after blowing out the Wolverines in September. 

The disconnect in the argument: There is no rivalry between Texas and Michigan. There is endless rivalry between Ohio State and Michigan, and it has only become more bitter since the name Connor Stalions (27) entered into public consciousness. That one is off the rails. 

Planting the flag is asking for trouble. And trouble answered Saturday, in Columbus, Chapel Hill, Tallahassee and so forth. It was sore-loser behavior by the Buckeyes and other beaten home teams, to be sure, when taking lumps and leaving the field would be the more mature choice. But in those instances the visitors invited an ugly scene and got it.

So there are a couple of relatively simple options to address the issue:

• For all conference games, visiting teams must leave their flags at home (28). You cannot have nice things until you earn them back.
• If nobody has the stomach to prevent visiting programs from bringing flags to the stadium, establish an aggressive fine schedule for anyone planting (or attempting to plant) one on a midfield logo of the home team.
• Set an exit clock (29) for both teams to leave the field. If they want to sing the alma mater with the band or some other postgame tradition, O.K. But then set the scoreboard clock to two minutes and send everyone to the locker room.
• Visitors or home team, any players, coaches or staffers who initiate physical altercations before or after a game can be subject to suspension, as ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreit (30) suggested Sunday on social media. There are a lot of complications with that, of course, starting with the direct conflict of interest inherent in a conference sidelining star players leading into or during the College Football Playoff. Also, this would open up rabbit holes of film study to determine aggressors vs. retaliators, shoves vs. punches, serious altercation vs. running of the mouths. That job would be so fraught with peril and thankless that it would be better outsourced to a national governing body—if only the NCAA hadn’t been kicked out of the business of running FBS football.

Beyond the nuts-and-bolts protocol of getting two teams in and out of a heated game without incident—and penalizing those who choose violence—it’s time for a larger conversation about institutional tenor in the aftermath of victory. 

It’s now standard practice for winning schools to use their official social media accounts to taunt those they have beaten. Winning isn’t enough without also rubbing it in on the losers.

Some of it can be clever, without question. But it has also normalized a trash-talk mentality that is probably better suited to the fans themselves. Turning official athletic department social media accounts into snark cannons aimed at the vanquished competition might not be consistent with the images those schools want to portray.

This all has an admitted No Fun Police tone, but there were some no-fun incidents Saturday. The posturing, tough-guy, embarrass-the-losing-side mentality threatens to diminish the actual accomplishment of winning. Walking off and letting the scoreboard do the talking is still the best way to celebrate a big victory.