The first Sunday with football was filled with an unexpected scrum on the hardwood.
Michigan men’s basketball coach Juwan Howard got into an altercation with Wisconsin coach Greg Gard. Howard apparently wasn’t happy about a late timeout called during the 77-63 victory.
Words became more than words. There was pushing and shoving and punches. Some have tried to Zapruder-film the blame, studying the video carefully for evidence of who started it, who escalated it, who finished it.
The reality is that everyone who pushed or shoved or punched is at fault, because things like this shouldn’t happen. Anyone who was involved in the scrum should face fair and reasonable discipline, consistent with the infractions. And it sounds as if that will happen.
It remains somewhat mind boggling that a fairly routine February basketball game would prompt such a reaction. It suggests that there’s something more to the story than the late timeout called by Gard, at a time when the game was decided.
Another thought that came to mind -- things of this nature don’t happen very often in pro (or college) football, where emotions often run a lot higher and hotter and the entire sport is premised on intense physicality. Although there are periodic exchanges of pleasantries (such as the brief post-game interaction between Ravens coach John Harbaugh and Bengals coach Zac Taylor in December), rarely does it turn physical.
One of the rare examples happened in 2011, when current Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh got into it bit of a pushing and shoving match with Lions coach Jim Schwartz. It was sudden and stunning and, frankly, entertaining. And while I didn’t embark on this path with a primary motivation to point out that the full story on Harbaugh vs. Schwartz (including some facts not previously reported) appears in Playmakers, which will be released in only 22 days, that’s where we currently are.
So, while we’re here, I wouldn’t be earning the advance if I didn’t drop the link and politely ask you to consider ordering it. Plenty of you already have, and I greatly appreciate that. Enough have been ordered that the initial run has been increased by more than 50 percent. Order it now, before the initial run is gone.