Urban Meyer blasts postgame Ohio State-Michigan fight: 'It's criminal, that's called assault'

During his days on the sideline, Urban Meyer had a rule whenever one of his players scored a touchdown: Hand the ball to the closest official and then celebrate with teammates, especially the offensive line that paved the way for the score.

Call him “old-school,” but the former Ohio State and Florida head coach had no time for grandstanding. It’s because of that philosophy that Meyer took issue with what transpired on the Ohio Stadium field following Michigan‘s 13-10 road upset of then-No. 2 Ohio State in The Game last Saturday.

Immediately following the final whistle, as players and coaches from both sidelines gathered near midfield, a brawl broke out between the two bitter rivals after one of the Michigan players attempted to plant their block “M” flag into the middle of the Ohio “O.” Ohio State linebacker Jack Sawyer took immediate offense and ripped the Michigan flag off its pole and throwing it to the ground as fists started to fly. It got so vicious and dangerous that local and state police working the game used pepper spray to break it up.

“This is wrong on all fronts,” Meyer said on this week’s The Triple Option podcast with Mark Ingram and Rob Stone. “Get off the field. I’m just not into taunting, I’m not into embarrassing your opponent. I’m into beating their ass the best you can, and that’s what they did. But then go celebrate. Don’t do that.

“And the next part is, Ohio State turned and charged them. Was that wrong? Absolutely wrong. It’s criminal. It’s called assault. In the real world you can’t do that. It’s wrong on all fronts,” Meyer continued. “But I’d also be disappointed in my team if I’m standing there and you see your archrival do something on your field. It’s time to go fight them. It’s what you do. It shouldn’t come to that though.”

Ohio State head coach Ryan Day defended his players engaging in the postgame melee afterwards.

“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.”

Urban Meyer, Mark Ingram debate police use of pepper spray

For his part, Meyer directed some of the responsibility for the postgame fracas to the NCAA, which prompted an interesting back-and-forth with former Alabama running back Mark Ingram.

“The NCAA has to finish that. Someone’s going to get badly hurt, a fan is going to get badly hurt,” Meyer said. “They were spraying mace or pepper spray – I had a friend that was there that got hit with it, and told me he was not right for the next hour after getting hit with that stuff. But is the police officer wrong? No. …”

Ingram interjected: “Yes.”

Meyer: “… You have 320-pound men getting ready to go after each other.”

Ingram: “Nobody’s armed, Coach, nobody has guns. Nobody has knives. … That’s assault, Coach, what (the police) did was assault. … You can’t just pepper spray all the kids like that.”

Stone: “I’d say the pepper spray kind of calmed things down and got people out of there.”

Ingram: “Yeah, because you couldn’t see or breathe any more.”

Stone: “Bingo. That’s the plan.”