Final words on Chaos

Our post on the Ohio State game sideline chaos has generated a lot of traffic over the last few days. Based on the stats I have, we have almost 10,000 hits from various Michigan, Ohio State, Michigan State, and West Virginia boards and blogs. This is good. We certainly want to welcome our friends (and enemies) to our little corner of the internet. Please don't burn any of our furniture.

The guys at the well produced tOSU blog Eleven Warriors posted this image yesterday making fun of RR. While I am looking forward to the day when the score is reversed and he still has the same look on his face, the most interesting part to me was that Chris Allen is still on the sidelines late into the 4th quarter. You can clearly see his "BENCH" pass in this video capture. My initial thought that Barwis was sent to remove him was incorrect. I do still believe that Barwis was sent to calm him down and prevent him from grabbing players facemasks when they should be playing.

I have been in the bench area of many football games both as a player and more recently as a photographer. Football is a passionate game. It is very common to have emotional outbursts and frustration. Given the way the season unfolded for Michigan, this event does not surprise me at all. I do not think it is an indication that things are massively "out of control" or that RR and staff have lost it. It just adds to the list of things that Michigan haters can grab onto and laugh at. This is nothing that a few unexpected wins in 2009 won't fix.