Ugly brawl breaks out after game
FORT WORTH, Texas – A massive brawl broke out at the conclusion of Thursday's Armed Forces Bowl between Mississippi State and Tulsa..
Minutes after the Bulldogs put the finishing touches on a 28-26 victory over the Golden Hurricane, the teams came to blows in a large melee on the field.
Tulsa coach Greg Montgomery
said sophomore safety Kendarin Ray, who was helped off the field after being at the bottom of a dogpile during a second scrum, was treated for “some sort of concussion.”
MSU head coach Mike Leach said during his postgame press conference that he didn't get a good look at how the fight started. He said for it
to escalate the way that it did was “dumb.”
“All of a sudden there was a mosh pit out there,” Leach said. “The root of it is dumb no matter what the root of it was. I would have it solidly in the category of dumb. Where the dumb started I am not entirely sure."
It was a chippy game throughout and Leach said it even started prior to the game.
"During warmups, there was a group of their guys that circled around our warmup and were talking,” Leach said. “I really don't know. I haven't seen enough film to let us off the hook on this thing by any stretch. We haven't had any trouble of that sort of thing all season. I don't know if they had or not and I don't know where the basis of that was.”
Montgomery said it was a case of his players standing up for each other.
“The one thing I'll say is our program, our guys, we're a team that are going to stand up for each other and we're going to battle,” Montgomery said. “We talk about faith, family, football and family's going to take care of family.
We're a team that has battled all year long. We battled again today. From that standpoint, our guys are going to continue to protect each other and go from there.”
On the thought if the brawl minimized the win for the Bulldogs in any way, Leach didn't believe that was the case.
"It didn't mar anything we did out there whatsoever,” Leach said. “It is done.”