Bowl season is, for better or worse, rolling along in college football as a very strange 2020 season comes to a close with, fittingly, some very strange bowl matchups. Among those was Thursday’s Armed Forces Bowl game between Mississippi State and Tulsa, which saw the Bulldogs edging out the Golden Hurricane in a 28-26 game that will be talked about far more for what happened after the final whistle blew.
At the end of action, when the two teams would typically meet for handshakes, they instead traded hands in the form of a benches clearing brawl that got pretty ugly, with at one point a Mississippi State player kicking a Tulsa player on the ground before running off and a number of punches being thrown, mostly between helmeted players but a few involving those with helmets off.
A massive brawl broke out at the end of the Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl between Tulsa and Mississippi State. pic.twitter.com/zfaq912SWU
— ESPN (@espn) December 31, 2020
The Armed Forces Bowl between Mississippi State and Tulsa ended in a sidelines-clearing brawl, because of course it did. Just end already, 2020. pic.twitter.com/L61BOllkgu
— Tyler Horka (@tbhorka) December 31, 2020
Punching guys in helmets remains the dumbest football guy thing that happens far too frequently, as your best hope is to somewhat startle the person you punch and the worst case is breaking your hand. That said, the guy from Tulsa that runs up on a bunch of Mississippi State players without his helmet and then has to retreat while dodging punches to his uncovered head probably should’ve thought that decision through a bit more.
It was a competitive game but not one you would have expected to end in fisticuffs, but then again, I guess you throw out all the record books when Tulsa and Mississippi State meet in Fort Worth.
