Sherrone Moore states postgame fight with Ohio State 'can't happen'

Around the same time his counterpart defended his players for their role in the postgame scuffle between Michigan and Ohio State following a 13-10 win for the Wolverines, Michigan head coach Sherrone Moore called out his players for their part and said such incidents “can’t happen.”

The incident was kicked off when Michigan players, in a celebratory furor, paraded a block M flag around and went to plant it at midfield. At that point, the Ohio State players still on the field “charged” the Wolverines, Moore said, and both teams responded poorly from there.

“It was emotions on both sides,” Moore said. “And our guys, I did see they had the flag and guys were waving it around and their guys charged us. So it’s emotion on both sides, it can’t happen. So rivalry games get heated, especially this one, it’s the biggest one in the country, so we’ve got to handle that better.”

Moore was also asked about the fact that Ohio State police and other law enforcement on the field seemingly used pepper spray to separate the teams.

He was not overly exercised about that happening.

“Those were the officers that were around,” Moore said about the pepper spray. “They were just trying to control, the security was trying to control everything. They got both sides of guys, trying to make sure we took care of them. But we’ve gotta do a better job handling that, as a group. I’ll address it in the locker room, we’ll address it again. But that’s both sides.”

Ohio State head coach Ryan Day cut a different tack in his postgame press conference.

Day, though, said his team is full of prideful players who weren’t going to let Michigan plant the flag.

“Yeah I don’t know all the details of it,” Day said in his subdued postgame press conference. “But I know that these guys are looking to put a flag on our field and our guys weren’t going to let that happen. I’ll find out exactly what happened but this is our field and certainly we’re embarrassed at the fact we lost the game but there’s some prideful guys on our team that weren’t just going to let that happen.”

Michigan planted the flag at midfield of Ohio Stadium in 2022 after beating Ohio State and no such postgame incident occurred.

Specifically in this skirmish, defensive end Jack Sawyer could be seen ripping down the Michigan flag and stepping on it. Sawyer returned to Ohio State for his senior season, along with countless other Buckeyes who passed up the 2024 NFL Draft, to beat Michigan.

They leave Columbus 0-4 against the Wolverines.