Michigan, Ohio State players huddle in prayer amid postgame fight

As chaos erupted Saturday following a hotly contested rivalry football game between the University of Michigan and Ohio State University, some players opted to join in prayer instead.

Video footage from Saturday’s game between the two bitter rivals, which resulted in Michigan beating Ohio State 13-10 in Columbus, shows a fight erupting after the game and police using pepper spray to get the situation under control.

An X post shared by Caroline Rice of the Ohio State athletics-focused publication The Ozone provides additional context as to what caused the fight. The first video in the post shows Michigan State players attempting to plant their school’s flag on Ohio State’s football field. 

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Another video, shared by CBS Sports reporter Brandon Marcello, shows two members of the Ohio State Buckeyes and one player for the Michigan Wolverines huddled in prayer as the unrest unfolded around them. A photo shared by Rice shows a much larger group of players from Ohio State gathered in prayer amid the tense situation. 

While the melee was going on between Michigan and Ohio State, Ryan Day looked on and two Buckeyes and a Wolverine huddled together to pray pic.twitter.com/Bz3DwV6Ua8

— Brandon Marcello (@bmarcello) December 1, 2024

A debate has broken out online regarding which team should take the blame for the altercation.

In an interview with FOX Sports after the game, Michigan running back Kalel Mullings remarked, “You hate to see stuff like that after the game.” 

Describing the optics of the fight as “bad for the sport” and “bad for college football,” he pointed the finger at Ohio State for initiating the unrest.

“They gotta learn how to lose,” he said. “You can’t be fighting and stuff just because you lost a game.”

Boston Herald columnist Bill Speros offered his thoughts on the brawl in an X post.

Asserting that Michigan was “alone on the field at the 50 [yard line] after winning,” Speros insisted that “OSU players ran all the way across the field and began this fight.”

“OSU could not beat Michigan, but they cheap-shotted Michigan after the game,” he wrote. Denouncing the team for making a “100% loser move,” he maintained, “If you can’t win the game, you don’t get to cry post game.”

In response to several replies contending that Michigan provoked the fight by planting a flag in the middle of the OSU field, Speros agreed that “UM players did not have to plant [the] flag” and that doing so was “unnecessary.” Still, he maintained that the reaction of the OSU players was “100x worse,” likening them to “spoiled kids” and declaring that “planting flag does not = violence.”

The post-game fighting did not come without steep consequences for both teams.

In a statement released Sunday, The Big Ten Conference, which both schools are members of, announced that both schools face fines of $100,000 for violating the “Big Ten Sportsmanship Policy.”

“Not only did the actions of both teams violate fundamental elements of sportsmanship such as respect and civility, the nature of the incident also jeopardized the safety of participants and bystanders,” the Big Ten added.