Suddenly, flag planting is all the rage in college football. It’s a trend that should end. | Opinion

College football flag planting celebrations were fun for a while, for the victors at least. But now they’re something else entirely, and it’s time to end them. This isn’t about the fun police coming for college football. It’s about keeping the actual police — and everyone else — safe.

When University of Oklahoma quarterback Baker Mayfield famously planted a giant OU flag at the 50-yard line after his team beat Ohio State University on their field in 2017, he said the idea came to him in the spur of the moment a year after Ohio State won a game and celebrated in song on his turf.

“It was embarrassing, for them to sing their fight song on our field,” he told reporters that day. “They’re probably feeling the same way right now.”

This past Saturday, another stunning Ohio State loss at home, this one to arch rival Michigan, led to a big blue flag being planted in the same spot — and fueled an ugly fight among players that took police and pepper spray to resolve.

It was a bad look for college football, and if it were the only such poor display that day, people might have moved onto other topics, like looming conference championship games and the ensuing playoffs. But flag plantings led to several skirmishes between victorious road teams and their opponents — including one after a huge University of South Carolina road win over in-state enemy Clemson University.

A day after pushing and shoving followed a third straight year of flag planting after the Palmetto Bowl that traditionally alternates between Williams-Brice and Memorial stadiums, Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said enough was enough and that he’d work with USC coach Shane Beamer to end them. Meanwhile, debate escalated across the college football world about whether it’s a part of what makes the sport so much fun or it’s something to stop.

So should the NCAA ban flag planting? Yes, it should.

Flag planting has gone from Baker Mayfield’s funny lark to something that is putting police officers in the hospital.

A police union official said an officer sustained a head injury when he was “knocked down and trampled while trying to separate players fighting” after Saturday’s Michigan flag planting. The AP reported that the officer was treated at a hospital and released.

South Carolina players planted a USC flag at midfield atop Clemson’s tiger paw after the Palmetto Bowl’s exciting finish left No. 15 USC atop No. 12 Clemson 17-14 in Death Valley. That kicked off a scrum that lasted several minutes. Swinney was at the center of the scuffle on Saturday, and called it “scary” and “dangerous.”

“We’ve gotta make sure that doesn’t happen anymore,” he told reporters on Sunday.

Similar episodes erupted after North Carolina State University’s 35-30 win over the University of North Carolina and Florida’s 31-11 defeat of Florida State. After Arizona State University’s 49-7 trouncing of University of Arizona, a Sun Devils player spiked a trident into the turf and a Wildcats player removed it, but cooler heads prevailed before a brawl broke out. One clearly could have, though.

Reactions predictably range from rage to run-of-the-mill shoulder shrugs.

In Florida, Florida State coach Mike Norvell grabbed the flag from a Florida player while Florida coach Billy Napier called his team’s episode embarrassing and said the players involved would face consequences. But Ken Suguira, a sports columnist for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, wrote that it’s just an innocuous, “superfluous” part of the game — “a fun part of rivalry games” — that makes college football a “different (and arguably better) sport than the NFL.”

Former NFL executive Andrew Brandt doesn’t even get why flag planting has become a thing.

“For winning a football game?” he tweeted on Saturday. “You didn’t conquer a country.”

Mayfield himself says flag planting should not be outlawed. After Texas defeated Oklahoma in their famed Red River Rivalry this year, Texas players not only planted a flag at midfield but speared it through Mayfield’s jersey. Mayfield says it’s just something that happens annually.

“It’s not anything special,” he said in a news conference on Sunday after leading the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to an overtime win against the Carolina Panthers in the NFL. “You take your ‘L’ and you move on. I’ll leave it at that.”

Asked if it would be a mistake for the NCAA to ban flag planting, Mayfield said, “College football’s meant to have rivalries. It’s like the Big 12 banning the ‘Horns down’ signal. Let the boys play.”

But the NCAA has acted previously to sidestep potential problems.

The 2024 NCAA football rulebook cautions against taunting before games and bans excessive celebrations during the game. Its statement on unsportsmanlike conduct reads, “These actions are a bad look for the game and can lead to unnecessary confrontations between the teams and must be eliminated. The pregame warm-up rules are designed to ensure proper sportsmanship before our contests. Officials should be vigilant during the pregame whenever players are on the field. Unsportsmanlike acts before the game are detrimental to the sport and must be cleaned up.”

The same thing can be said for postgame interactions as well. In fact, the rulebook says, “The rules committee reminds head coaches of their responsibility for the behavior of their players before and after, as well as during, the game.”

Before and after, as well as during.

It would hardly take a major rewriting of the rulebook to ban flag planting. Though it would require coaches communicating with players, universities communicating with fans and the NCAA promising consistent enforcement, something the NCAA doesn’t always apply.

USC fans will remember that Dylan Stewart drew a penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct after celebrating a sack by shooting a pretend gun this year. A similar celebration by Stewart shortly after did not draw a penalty, showing how the NCAA can apply punishments inconsistently, even though the rule book says “simulating the firing of a weapon” should be flagged.

Any SEC fan already knows how costly such a penalty can be. Remember the 2019 Egg Bowl? Mississippi missed a long extra point attempt after a player was penalized for lifting his leg and pretending to urinate like a dog in the end zone after scoring a touchdown that should’ve sent the game to overtime.

The players know the stakes involved, and the NCAA has also already taken steps to ensure postgame safety as well. Fines for fans storming the field range from $100,00 for first-time offenses up to $500,000. USC was fined $250,000 for a second violation after fans rushed the field just last month following a victory over Texas A&M.

On Sunday, the Big Ten Conference fined Michigan and Ohio State universities $100,000 each for violating its sportsmanship policy for the post-game brawl. Now it’s up to the NCAA to go one step further and ban flag planting next year in an effort to prevent future altercations and keep the focus where it should be: on the great games.

It’s not a matter of killing joy or freedom of expression or taking any of the fun out of college sports. Maybe it’s about teaching students and the nation itself how to win and lose with class. Or maybe it’s just about ensuring no one gets seriously hurt as someone inevitably will.

Losing will still be terrible, and winning will still be fun. But there are plenty of ways to celebrate a big win, especially one like USC’s over Clemson on Saturday. Students are smart. They’ll think of something else.

Meanwhile in Columbia, we all get to celebrate the victory until next year’s Palmetto Bowl takes place here.

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