Less than 10 years removed from his days as an NFL receiver, the 6-foot-2, 210-pound Jason Avant remains in game shape.
He needed it on Saturday.
As Avant walked off the Ohio State football field after his Michigan Wolverines pulled off a stunning upset, he spotted something downright strange: an Ohio State player lugging around a blue flag brandishing a maze-colored block M that had been ripped from its pole.
“I said, ‘Who’s that jerk with the flag?'” recalled Avant, a Michigan sideline reporter. “I thought they weren’t supposed to have a flag!” So I took the flag from him.”
Ohio State players and staff immediately gathered around him, Avant said, pushing and shoving, even trying to get the flag back.
“I still train seven days a week,” he said with a laugh during an interview on Sunday. “I knew they didn’t knock me down.
Amidst plenty of college football conflict and the Michigan-Ohio State conflict, it kicked off a day full of squealing coaches, post-game punches and flag-on-the-field attacks. Left hooks were landed. Helmets were thrown. Fans, coaches and players exchanged words, shoves and yes, flags.
The act of sticking a flag into the opponent’s home field turf, or at least waving such a flag in center field, has set off many a melee.
In Columbus, after his team’s stunning upset of the No. 2 Buckeyes, Derrick Moore emerged from the tunnel with the same Michigan flag that Avant eventually recovered. Moore marched through a sea of Michigan and Ohio State players and eventually had the flag ripped from his hands by Ohio State senior Jack Sawyer.
Hours later in Clemson, a group of South Carolina players stuck a Carolina flag into the tiger paw logo at midfield after defeating their opponents. In Chapel Hill, NC State stormed back to win over North Carolina, getting a flag of its own from Wolfpack safety Cyrus Fagan.
Finally, in Tallahassee, the Florida Gators capped off their victory over Florida State with an enthusiastic flag raising by junior George Gumbs Jr. – a move that sparked not just a fight but a heated exchange between the team heads on the pitch. coaches.
The whole pennant craze has some college sports leaders suggesting that conferences control such postgame incidents through uniform and agreed-upon policies. The four power leagues should “get together to review these issues,” Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark said.
“We have to come together,” ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said. “We can do things independently in conferences, but we all have to come together and our approach has to be aggressive. This is unacceptable.”
On Sunday night, the Big Ten fined both Michigan State and Ohio State $100,000. As of 10 a.m. ET Monday, the other leagues had not announced disciplinary action.
In previous years, SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey advised his member schools to remove the flags from the field late in the game to avoid such problems. He held talks with administrators Saturday to reinforce that message — one that may have been noticed by University of Texas officials, who, under coach Steve Sarkisian, prevented Longhorns players from celebrating the Texas A&M quarterback’s logo in the last SEC game. night.
“Flags should not be planted there.” Go win the game and go to the locker room,” Sankey told Yahoo Sports on Sunday. “If you want to hang the flag, play ‘capture the flag’ or join the army or fly to the moon.”
Planting flags is a centuries-old custom that has its roots in the military conquest of enemy territory. It has penetrated the sports stratosphere, with road teams occasionally using the move to celebrate a victory on the opponent’s field.
While flag-blowing rose to an extreme level this weekend, this has been happening for years in one of the nation’s biggest rivalries: Oklahoma vs. Texas, a game held annually in the Cotton Bowl – a neutral site.
After this year’s 34-3 win over the Sooners, Texas players performed a more specific routine of placing the flag at midfield. They pierced the flagpole through Oklahoma’s No. 6 jersey, which belongs to Baker Mayfield. While at OU, Mayfield gained a post-game reputation for planting flags, most famously placing the Sooners’ flag at midfield at Ohio Stadium after a 2017 win over the Buckeyes.
After leading the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to an overtime victory over the Panthers on Sunday, Mayfield told reporters that he opposes any rule banning the act.
“Let the boys play,” he said.
“I’ll say this: OU-Texas does it every time they play,” he said. “It’s nothing special. Take your ‘L’ and move on. I’ll leave it at that.”
However, this act sparked violence over the weekend.
At Ohio Stadium, law enforcement even deployed pepper spray in an attempt to break up the altercation. Ohio State Police released a statement saying one of its officers was injured and required medical attention.
Videos of several incidents on the field, from Chapel Hill to Clemson, showed players exchanging physical blows with other players as well as fans.
In the center of it all was… a flag.
Florida State coach Mike Norvell is seen on video throwing the Gators flag off the FSU field. In North Carolina, UNC receiver Tylee Craft tossed the NC state flag into the stands. In Columbus, Sawyer tore a Michigan flag from its pole and tossed it to the ground as a partial crowd roared in approval.
It is often about payback. For example, after Clemson beat South Carolina last season, Tigers players gave a victory exclamation point by flying a flag at Williams-Brice Stadium.
On Sunday, Clemson coach Dabo Swinney called the flag a “bad look” and plans to speak with South Carolina coach Shane Beamer to make sure it doesn’t happen in the future. Swinney found himself trapped between fans and players from both teams who ran onto the field at Clemson on Saturday.
“I was dead in the middle of it and I was lucky to get out alive,” he said. “It was scary and dangerous and we need to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Not everyone reacted in such a way.
In his press conference immediately following his team’s loss to Michigan, Ohio State coach Ryan Day suggested that his players were merely defending their home court. “These guys wanted to put a flag on our field and our guys wouldn’t allow it,” he said. “This is our field.
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As it turns out, earlier this year Michigan was the victim of a flag incident from Texas players after the Longhorns beat the Wolverines 31-12 in September. Three months later, Sarkisian led an effort to prevent a repeat in College Station. “I just watched Ohio State and Michigan (into) a full-on brawl in my hotel room and I just didn’t think it was right,” he said afterward.
Florida coach Billy Napier described his team’s flag as “embarrassing to me” and apologized for the act. “We shouldn’t have done that.” We will not do this in the future and it will have consequences for everyone involved,” he said.
Of course, sometimes it’s not a flag at all.
After Saturday’s win at Arizona, Arizona State’s players stuck their pitchforks in the Tucson turf. ASU defensive end Jacob Rich Kongaika, a transfer from Arizona, planted the Sun Devils’ signature pitchfork on the ‘A’ Wildcats, resulting in a brief scuffle.
Flag or pitchfork, some believe the conferences themselves should take more action beyond financial penalties.
In a social media post Sunday night, ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreit, a former Ohio State quarterback who has two sons who played for the Buckeyes, called on conference commissioners to suspend those players who escalated or contributed to postgame fights.
“Sit those involved for their next game, whether it’s a bowl game or a playoff game,” he wrote. “These guys need consequences for their own good!”
A suspension would be at the expense of the leagues themselves — a conflict that Herbstreit notes in his post. Absent players would affect the conference’s performance in games against rival leagues with potentially millions at stake. The conference will receive $4 million for each team that advances to the CFP and each team that advances to the quarterfinals. That amount increases to $6 million for each team that advances to the semifinals and national championship.
There is no centralized governing body that can control such matters in an impartial and conflict-free manner. Many administrators believe this is the missing piece in an industry that is evolving from a regionalized amateur sport to a more national professionalized model.
But not everyone believes in policing flags.
Count Avant as one of them.
“I thought it was classless of them to start fighting,” he said. “For the last five years in college football, that’s been the staple that a winning team has planted. That’s part of it. Ohio State kicked our ass for 15 years and they hung the flags. We did not make an exception. Texas did it on our field earlier this year. We didn’t make an exception.”
After wrestling a flag from an Ohio State player, Avant marched up the Michigan tunnel and into the locker room — the flag, now somewhat infamously, seized in his possession.
“When the players came back into the dressing room,” he said, “I waved the flag at them and they went crazy.”