Urban Meyer rips Big Ten over fines for Ohio State, Michigan

The Ohio State–Michigan game saw tensions flare at the end as the Wolverines went to celebrate by planting their flag at midfield at Ohio Stadium. That led to a fight breaking out between players from both sides.

In response to that fight, the Big Ten handed out fines of $100,000 to each of the teams involved. Despite that decision, not everyone was happy with the Big Ten’s response. In particular, former Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer shared on The Triple Option that he doesn’t think the fine will do anything to stop fights in the future.

“Stop with that,” Urban Meyer said. “It’s like saying, ‘Okay, let’s take off wins from 20 years ago.’ What do they call that? I used to die laughing when our AD would tell me some school who was cheating, yeah they [rescind] the wins or something like that. That’s gonna do a lot. You gotta punish it. $100,000 fine. Okay. I think, I don’t know.”

Instead of punishing the schools with a fine, Meyer suggested that the people actually involved in the incident should be punished. That means suspensions to players and potentially coaches to help try and disincentive those kinds of actions in the future.

“Whoever grabbed the flag, that person is done for a game and the head coach is gonna be potentially suspended as well because he didn’t enforce it. That’s how I would handle it,” Meyer said. “The money, $100,000. Where does that money go? I always crack up about that. It’s a $100,000 fine. Okay Big Ten Conference, tell me exactly where the $100,000 goes, and who cares. That’s not going to deter people from doing that. When someone’s gonna get really hurt badly and it just looks awful for the greatest game that exists.”

If there is a game where it’s not surprising tensions would boil over, it’s The Game. Ohio State and Michigan are two of the classic rivals in college football and there is real tension between the two. The close 13-10 win for Michigan was the fourth win in a row for the Wolverines and it knocked the Buckeyes out of the Big Ten Championship Game. That came on the back of a frustrating season for Michigan and as the Wolverines celebrated with the flag planting, tensions boiled over.

“Every action is either taught or allowed,” Meyer said. “Every action that anybody does is either taught or allowed. Right now, the NCAA says, ‘We’re allowing this.’ We’re gonna fine you $100,000. That is not a deterrent at all.”

Interestingly, the method of fining the school is similar to how the SEC looks to punish crowds storming a playing surface, issuing those fines to the schools themselves. Despite that, field storming situations have continued.