Group of Penn State football players involved in fight sending 4 Penn State fraternity members to the hospital

Submitted by Bambi on February 1st, 2019 at 1:24 PM

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This offseason has already been pretty eventful for PSU with seemingly half the football team transferring, but the bad news keeps rolling today. Over the weekend a group of PSU athletes were involved in a fight with PSU fraternity members that sent 4 fraternity members to a local hospital to be treated. A video of part the fight can be seen in the tweet below:

Tweet

No person has been officially charged (and as such no names officially released) but according to PSU fans the athletes involved were football players. Specifically named as members of the fight (and identifiable in the video according to PSU fans, I couldn't tell you who's who) are Yetur Gross-Matos and Tariq Castro-Fields. YGM was a 1st team All-B1G DE this past season as a junior and a potential 1st round pick next year, while TCF started 3 games at CB as a sophomore and was expected to start in 2019.

It'll be interesting to see what happens here and what charges are filed, especially since there's a video that supposedly clearly shows the involvement of the two players mentioned.

MGlobules

February 1st, 2019 at 2:51 PM ^

Question: why do frat boys seem to collide with athletes this way? Had a rash of this sort of thing at another major U where my wife teaches. . . seems to be a thing. Is it mookfan entitlement, riding players when they fail to live up to the impossible standards they have for them? Do they see challenging athletes as some kind of big game hunt? Some kind of subcult ritual that I am unaware of? Somebody with some insight please. . . fill us in.

ijohnb

February 1st, 2019 at 3:10 PM ^

Frat boys are big fish in the little pool that they create for themselves and are often only notable based on their status within that very system.  I think that they feel threatened by the fact that the presence of athletes diminishes their standing.  All of the sudden nobody cares about them and those girls aren't paying any attention to them because the real "big men on campus" have arrived. I am not applying this to all fraternity members but I think it explains the issue you are talking about. 

 

mGrowOld

February 1st, 2019 at 3:42 PM ^

When I was at Mich it was exactly the opposite of what you imagine.  I was in a fraternity (see post below) and our parties were closed to ANY male who wasn't a brother.  We didnt single out athletes for exclusion-we didnt let any guy in who wasnt "one of us".

Athletes, especially certain members if the football team, didnt like that and thought they should be allowed to attend just because they were football players.  That's when conflict arose.

So is that considered "challenging athletes" because we didnt open the party up to someone we didnt invite?

ijohnb

February 1st, 2019 at 3:46 PM ^

I don't think fraternities are like that at all anymore so I don't think anybody can answer your question as it pertains to present day (or even twenty years ago).  I have never been in a fraternity but I have been to like 500 fraternity parties (a lot of them at Michigan) and was never once confronted or denied access because I did not belong to the fraternity.  Yeah, I had to know somebody who knew somebody but that was about it.

APBlue

February 1st, 2019 at 5:00 PM ^

I seem to remember hearing athletes like Mark Spindler and Charles Barkley talk about being out at bars, etc. & guys wanting to fight them.  

Some guys get a few beers in them and see a pro athlete that's supposed to be kind of a bad ass (or a total bad ass) and they want to see if they got what it takes.  

Liquid courage will make guys do stupid shit.

NowTameInThe603

February 1st, 2019 at 5:22 PM ^

Most are going to blame the frat but its 90% the athletes fault. The frats have the best parties so athletes go to them. Hearing a no at the door will not fly and goes down 1 of 2 ways; they are let in or fight. Its ego vs ego.

And ya frats can be full of douche bags but if you are going to them its hard to give the frat the blame.

bronxblue

February 1st, 2019 at 1:33 PM ^

I'm actually surprised this doesn't happen more often.  Lots of liquid courage at parties and I'd have to imagine being a pretty large athlete would make you more of a target for guys who have something to say about something.

Mark my words - Franklin is going to have a rough year and will be considered on the hot seat next off season.  Whatever good luck/vibes they had seem to have left them completely.

mGrowOld

February 1st, 2019 at 1:41 PM ^

My senior year (1981) Steve Smith, our starting QB, tried to crash one of my fraternity's party.  I was a Sigma Chi and we are right next to the Union and sit between South & West Quad so if you're in any of those places, and the party is loud, you know it's happening.

He got stopped at the door by one of my fraternity brothers who called for me and couple other guys who were pretty big (one of which was the Big 10 heavyweight wrestling champion) to stop him from getting in because Smith was both drunk and determined to get inside.

Believe it or not Smith pulled the "do you know who I am" card with me and I said "yes, we all know exactly who you are and you're still not welcome here."  It was tense for a minute or two but I think he and his buddies (didnt recognize either of them) realized a 3 against 40ish fight would go badly  for them so they left.

 

BlueWolverine02

February 1st, 2019 at 2:28 PM ^

We used to always let football players into parties.  I remember Henne was trying to get in and the guy working the door didn't recognize him.  I walked up, said don't you know who that is, and let him in.  We never had trouble with football players.

I did see a fight almost happen at Touchdowns when the EMU football team decided to party in AA and our team was there too.  That could have ended poorly.

jbrandimore

February 1st, 2019 at 4:28 PM ^

I'm not sure I'm down with naming names, but I can say that I lived in South Quad in the early 80s (that was where the football team lived then).

The team used to stay in a hotel on Friday nights before a game. Largely, I suppose to avoid having players drunk and hungover on game day Saturdays.

I can say that if Bo knew that 2 day hangovers were a thing, they might have won a few more games in those years.

NittanyFan

February 1st, 2019 at 2:33 PM ^

Most (3) of Franklin's 5 PSU teams have had rather weak internal leadership (2016-2017 were the exception).  This was exceptionally the case with the 2015 & 2018 teams.  Trace was a leader and a tough kid but he didn't seem to have any back-up at all.

Anyway, these sort of stupid things happen on teams with weak internal leadership.  The video isn't the clearest thing in the world, but head-strong folk don't even think about getting involved in drunken after-hours rumbles.  Obviously.

Blue in St Lou

February 1st, 2019 at 11:07 PM ^

One of my law school profs wrote a song parody to "The Yellow Rose of Texas," called "The Common Law of Texas." Part of it went:


A loyal son of Texas

One night went on a spree

Committing seven murders,

Some rape and burglary;

The jury sentenced him to the electric chair of course,

But the reason why they fried him

Was the bastard stole a horse.