Thug Life! (Casey)

Xavier vs Cincinnati Fight

So Saturday instead of College Football (other than the great Army vs Navy Game) we got to watch some great College Basketball. I mean #1 and #2 fell on saturday, and locally BYU and Utah played. But all the college world can talk about is the fight at the end of the Xavier vs Cincinnati game. I was watching the BYU vs Utah game when Dallin happened to see on the ticker that the Xavier game had been cut short because of a bench clearing brawl. So of course I turned the channel to ESPN News to see what happened and after I saw it I was amazed. It all started early in the week and during pregame when both teams were jawing back and forth and at half time Xavier Junior #10 Mark Lyons got into it with a bench player from Cincinnati as the teams left the court. Then in the final seconds of the game with the ballgame well in hand a Xavier Player and a Cincinnati player came nose to nose, someone was pushed and it all quickly went down hill from there. It was an embarrassment for both school and to watch #34 Yancy Gates from Cincinnati throw a sucker punch at #32 Kenny Frease then watch another Cincinnati player #13 Cheikh Mbodj stomp on Frease's head while he was down was actually criminal! So why is it that this kind of behavior is ok on the court or on the field when in real life those men (I use the term loosely) would have been thrown in Jail. Now I did hear that some criminal charges could be brought down on some of those that threw punches, which i hope they do, but this whole "Thug" mentality in sports especially in basketball needs to go away. After that fight and during the press conference Xavier SENIOR guard Tu Holloway said this:

"We are grown men over here, we got a whole bunch of Gangstas in the locker room, not thugs but tough guys on the Court!"

This mentality has to change, these guys are not gangsters they are BASKETBALL PLAYERS and they represent an Institution or City. When something like this happens I think these players should be kicked off any team until time comes that they realize that its more than street ball they are playing. If you want to play like a thug you should not be able to get a free education and represet a school. Now there were suspensions handed down and I was greatfull to hear the Cincinnati coach say that none of the players involved would be allowed to return to the team untill they apologized on tape and the coach deemed it an appropriate and truthfull apology. I hope these guys will begin to remember what they are playing for and how this can effect them later on in life, and stop with this stupid thinking and just play the game that we all love to watch.