Rece Davis shares his take on flag planting, fighting rivals

Rece Davis took a hardline stance on the flag-planting epidemic that shook the college football world in Week 14, leading to multiple fights between rival programs, most notably Michigan and Ohio State.

Baker Mayfield popularized flag-planting after a big road victory when Oklahoma defeated the Buckeyes in 2016. However, it took on a new life this past weekend, as postgame scuffles broke out between multiple programs aside from the Wolverines and Ohio State, with Florida and Florida State, and Arizona and Arizona State also getting into it.

After witnessing all the action in Week 14, Davis shared his thoughts on the matter on the latest episode of the College GameDay Podcast. He doesn’t want to see players not celebrate after big wins in rivalry games, but he does believe planting your team’s flag at midfield is inviting a response from the losing team.

“I’ve thought about this, I knew we were going to talk about it, and I want to be very careful, because as you guys know, I love to say this. — the aggregators will say, ‘Rece Davis is calling for fights.’ I’m not calling for fights. I’m saying that there’s a responsibility that goes with winning, and when you win, you have an opportunity to celebrate,” Davis started. “You’ve worked very hard. You should celebrate. That’s fine. Nobody wants you to be robots. I don’t want them to be robots. I always thought that when Chip Kelly was at Oregon, that this whole nameless, faceless, opponent thing was good to a degree. But you’ve got, we’ve talked about finding the line. That’s a very difficult thing to do. Easy thing to say, difficult thing to do.

“Same goes with celebrating. You can celebrate and you should. You’ve worked very hard. Rivalry games, emotional games, we don’t want to take the emotion out of this sport. But when you go into an opponent’s stadium and you go and you grab the flag and you run to the middle of the field, and I know Baker Mayfield made this famous at Ohio State in what, 2016? I think it was 2016. When you do that, you’re challenging the other side to a fight because as happy as you are, they’re upset. And I think that they’re, I don’t know exactly how to say this other than saying it, and I’m not condoning the fighting, but fighting is not an unreasonable response.

“You know, because you’re not just celebrating, now you’ve crossed the line, as we keep talking about lines, into insulting the other side, right? So if you go, if you want to plant your flag on your field in front of your fans, okay. But when you go in, and I understand the emotion behind it, but when you go in to do that, I don’t know how you can really be upset with the other side when somebody just slapped you in the face for punching them back. That’s why you’ve got to get the teams off the field and into the locker room, especially in a volatile situation like that.

“I want teams to celebrate victories. I want them to be emotional. I don’t want to take that away. But this idea of, and it’s biblical to turn the other cheek, but there are also times, even if you go spiritually here, as I’m not turning this into a biblical podcast, that there are times when the anger gets kindled, and it’s not unrighteous for the anger to be kindled. And that’s what that does to me.”

‘You’re instigating it and you’re inviting it because it’s a highly emotional moment’

As you can see, Davis makes some salient points on the matter. He doesn’t believe it should be entirely outlawed, as it should be up to the programs to decide, but he did praise Steve Sarkisian for the way the Texas Longhorns handled their win against Texas A&M this past weekend.

“I’m not saying, I don’t think you should outlaw it. I think each program should decide,” Davis added. “Did you guys see Sark? I think Texas went to the middle of the logo, and Sark was doing some interviews and celebrating, and all of a sudden, he sees it. He starts running to the middle going, ‘No, no, no, no, no,’ and he starts, he’s herding them off.

“Now, maybe that is in response to what he had to be aware of, likely was aware of, that it happened other places earlier in the day. But also, it’s like, here’s the standard for our program. We’re not doing that. You know, we won the game, we’re gonna celebrate, we’re gonna enjoy it. You know, I know you guys took a bunch of junk when you walked into the stadium here, got it? But we’re not gonna go be insulting. You know, we’re not gonna go invite them to come fight us. Because I think that’s what you’re doing.

“When you plant the flag, when you go and do that stuff, you’re saying, ‘Hey, hey, want some more? Come out here. Come on.’ You’re inviting it. So don’t act surprised when they say, ‘Okay, here I come.’ Again, not condoning that, but I think you’re instigating it and you’re inviting it because it’s a highly emotional moment.

“When you go and violate the tenet of the great Lee Corso, then you’re inviting it. LC, ‘When you lose, say little. When you win, say less,’ and we haven’t seen much of that in these rivalry games this year.”

It may have been highly entertaining, but Week 14 didn’t feature much sportsmanship between rivals when you look at the bigger picture. Time will tell if there’s any rules made against flag-planting in the near future, but Rece Davis laid out the entire situation expertly, hitting on both sides of the argument.