What started out as good clean fun and a delightful bonding exercise between students and student-athletes deteriorated into a potential mob scene and an act of bullying as a group of students pelted a 68-year-old man and his car with snowballs, one student in a UO letterman’s jacket dumping a recycling box of snow over the man’s head.
The victim turned out to be a retired UO professor. While it was a snowball fight, the students crossed a line in picking on an elderly man who wasn’t involved until they targeted him. Anna Canzano (John Canzano’s wife, a KATU news anchor and reporter) interviewed Sherwin Simmons Saturday evening. He declined to press charges but did describe their behavior as a “stupid, dangerous thing, anti-evolutionary behavior.”
The UO Dean of Students issued a statement, and the Oregon Daily Emerald identified Duck tight end Pharaoh Brown as the student who dumps the box of snow on the driver as he gets out of his car.
“Snowbrawl 2013” was just a snowball fight, organized by Josh Huff and some of his teammates, but everything snowballed when the video surfaced. Unfortunately the incident will be played up as a reflection on the university and the football team. There will likely be some team discipline for players involved in the altercation with Simmons, who went on to say what happened wasn’t any different than something he might have done when he was an undergraduate at Yale.
Things are different in Eugene. Jameis Winston just beat a rape charge. The starting tailback at LSU participated in a brawl at a bar where a man was kicked in the head. Out here, it’s an investigative report by two Canzanos if someone throws a snowball.
On the other hand, the scene turned ugly and potentially dangerous, could have escalated into something worse. And it’s the kind of publicity the Oregon football team doesn’t need, something that can keep alive the ESPN storyline about them being soft, undisciplined, entitled and unfocused. “Snowbrawl 2013” was a good thing, just kids being kids, throwing snowballs outside the stadium. When they targeted a 68-year-old man and stopped his car, that took it too far. In an age of cell phone cameras, athletes have to be very aware of what they’re doing and who’s watching. It’s a different era, and unfortunately, Mark Helfrich will have to address it in some way, both with the players involved and the next time he faces the media.
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