Oregon Football Fight, was it worth it?

The pieces all came crashing down for Legaratte Blount, Oregon's premier running back on Thursday night. Following the conclusion of the Thursday, September 3rd football game between heated rivals #16 Oregon and #14 Boise St, chaos hit the blue turf in Idaho. Boise St player defensive end Byron Hout made the unfortunate mistake of taunting Legarrette Blount following Boise St's victory in their Thursday night opening game. Blount retaliated with a right hook that swept Hoyt off his feet. It was a knee jerk reaction fueled by adrenaline that will forever change the life of this young man. The youtube video covering the events has generated well over 300,000 views in as little as 4 days as well. It's one of those moments on sportscenter where you turn to your friend and say, "Dude, did you see this?" Unfortunately, Blount will be notoriously remembered by his actions following the game, not his ability to play football. Oregon University responded with a swift one year suspension from all games in the 2009 football season for Blount. It seems as if the university made a statement out of Blount with a harsh penalty to keep the reputation of the school intact, but was it necessary? The suspension will cost Blount dearly in his hopes of reaching the NFL. He will be able to participate in team practices but will not be able to reap the benefits of game-time experience. Negative media attention is the last thing that Oregon was hoping to attract over the course of this opening weekend for College Football.

It is very hard to assess how harsh the penalty should be for the player in this situation in my opinion. First, the consequences of the penalty have the ability to alter a persons life significantly in a very negative way. Second, how can you be certain that under the same circumstances that Blount was under would you have not done the same thing? Third, no one knows what Hoyt said to Blount that caused him to erupt. I would not like to be the one deciding on how long to suspend him for it would take an eternity for me to weigh all the factors involved. I am not quite sure what motivated Hoyt to taunt a player of the losing team in a large scale football game. I feel that Hoyt should have been penalized as well for demonstrating very poor sportsmanship. After punching Hoyt, Blount proceeded to walk off the field and try and jump into the stands and pull a Ron Artest. He was so enraged by the situation that he tried to attack people in the stands who were also taunting him. This person obviously has some anger management problems and he was not prepared for being taunted. His penalty is deserved but it is very disheartening to see a young man with so much to lose use such poor judgement.

With modern technology and youtube, being able to access virtually any clip of any video from almost any location in the world an event like this does not go unnoticed. Blount is going to have a very hard time staying motivated for a season in which he will never play a game.

(The youtube video was cancelled by youtube, as espn has the copyright rights to the film. At the time I wrote this it had about 300,000 hits)