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January 25, 1972: Minnesota Brawl

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brodybuck21;1098851; said:
my dad has told me about this mugging on more than one occasion. I usually have to tell him to stop talking about it because he gets real worked up about it and in turn gets me worked up. i have never seen footage of this but i despise minny all the same. The fact that it was racially motivated makes my blood boil...
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No need to despise them, those guys are gone. We just need to remember, so it doesn't happen again.
 
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I downloaded it to save it. Perhaps some others could do that. It is not the video that was available before, which was shot at a higher perspective and showed the fan involvement and the multiple places where numerous Minnesota players and fans were beating up on lone Buckeye players. But, at least it is some record.

By the way, it seems rather silly to characterize Minnesota today by the actions of those players and fans then.
 
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I remember watching the game when I was a kid and just sitting there with my jaw on the floor. As outrageous as the incident was, I was more outraged by the response of the Big Ten and tOSU. With Minny, we already knew what we were dealing with. They had clearly demonstrated who they were. But for our own administration and league officials to act as if it was some minor skirmish, that was borderline criminal. Truly shameful. Still makes me sick to think about it.

BTW - the uploaded video is not the broadcast video of that night. The broadcast video would give a much better appreciation for the player/fan participation. I wonder if a copy of that exists anywhere.
 
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Steve19;730039; said:
With all due respect, it clearly was. He was always rather thin but when he returned to play, he played like a different man. He was tentative and shied away from contact after that attack.

If I recall correctly, his average points per game, rebounds, and blocked shots dropped dramatically after the attack. As a result, he averaged less than 14 points a game compared with about 20ppg in his sophomore year.

Witte played tentatively throughout the rest of the season and his short pro career in which he averaged 4.5 points in his best year and less than half that his last two years.

As Woody always said, from every bad thing you get a good thing. Maybe all of this focused Witte on a ministry that helped others and maybe that made him happier than a pro career ever might have made him.

Thanks for the backup on the post I made over a year ago, Steve.

I'd pretty much forgotten about it, but whenever the topic is brought up, I'm ready to go off. Like I stated earlier, I was 10 when this happened, yet it's still so crystal clear. Luke Witte was an absolute STAR before this crap happened. And he was never the same after. The poster who disagreed with my original post stated that through Luke's ministry he's learned to forgive. Thats fine and wonderful, but my point was that there was tension between him and Brewer when they were with the Cavs, and that they were never "buddies" as I stated. Luke may have "forgiven" but I'll guarantee that to this day that he doesn't "like" the guy, or any of the other thugs that showed up that night, nor is there any way in hell that he should like them. Useless bunch of "thugs-turned-mugs" by the most piss poor Coach in the history of basketball. When cocksucker Stepien brought Musselman up here to coach the Cavs back many moons ago, the Cavs pretty much died in the eyes of most fans. It took his dismissal and a few years to get the fans back.

Peace.
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I was living in Clintonville and watched the game. You may recall that in those days the second any violence started the cameramen were directed to "look the other way" so the camera would usually find someone in row 33 picking his nose and focus on that for awhile. This night was different. It happened so fast and was so beyond the scale of anything anyone had seen before that the cameras actually caught a good deal of it.

In essence the Minnesopta team was rewarded. The stomping left the Buckeye's emotionally scarred.

As for Taylor, I had him for his basketball coaching class in 67. Funny man with a real knack for telling stories and one of the most respected coaches in the country in his time.

The brawl didn't help, but there were other factors going on. Taylor ran a program completely by the book. No one got anything from him more than NCAA rules permitted. It cost him the services of several players from Columbus East and Linden - McKinley when those two schools were tops in the state in hoops.

But it was more than that. I remember a year when the Buckeyes upset Cazzy Russell and Michigan at Ann Arbor. It was the last game of the season and gave the Buckeyes a tie for the Big Ten championship. It was a masterful job of coaching as that OSU team was woefully beneath the talent level of Michigan. The game was played on a Saturday evening and the lead story in the sports pages of the Dispatch was about Woody signing a kid from Deleware (Ohio, not the state of) to a scholarship. The baseketball game was below the fold.
 
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Winfield Thinks No One Remembers

I remember the Ohio State- Minnesota brawl vividly- even though I was only 13 years old. I have disliked Dave Winfield ever since I heard he became a major league ball player. It all goes back to the day in January when the disgraceful attack happened. True OSU diehards remember what he did, all the cheap shots he and his group did. God bless Luke Witte.
 
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Damn, I (won't say hate anymore but) still totally dislike/disrespect those guys: Winfield, Taylor, Behagan, Turner, Brewer, Nix, and Musselman

OCBuckWife said:
Undeletube won't pull it back up either.
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OCBuckWife said:
For those of us who haven't seen it, it would have been interesting to see it however. Reading about it isn't the same impact. Experiences both good and bad shape us, both as humans and as sports fans. You don't have to rewatch it if you don't want to.
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ScriptOhio said:


Damn, I (won't say hate anymore but) still totally dislike/disrespect those guys: Winfield, Taylor, Behagan, Turner, Brewer, Nix, and Musselman





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"Will there be suspensions?" Should've been some arrests. The scumbag who came off the bench to stomp on Witte's head would've been a good place to start.
 
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