Barry Tramel: Worst sports brawl: 1972 Minnesota-Ohio State basketball

BleedGopher

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per Tramel:

But my money, the worst brawl in sports history came in 1972. Again, on a college campus. Ohio State at Minnesota basketball.

On January 25, 1972 – 47 years ago Saturday – the Gophers ignited one of the worst displays of sportsmanship ever.

Footage of the events is available but quite rustic. The game made immediate national news, but people consumed that news through newspapers. There was no ESPN or social media to spread the images. Most sports fans were left to their imaginations on exactly how the morbid scene appeared.

The game was big. Minnesota was 9-3 and ranked 16th nationally. Ohio State was 10-2 and ranked sixth. In those days, only the conference champion made the NCAA Tournament, and indeed, the Gophers and Buckeyes would finish 1-2 in the Big Ten.

With 36 seconds left in the game at Williams Arena in Minneapolis, Ohio State led 50-44. Buckeye star Luke Witte, a 7-foot center, drove in for a shot and was fouled. He tumbled to the ground. The play was physical – both referees rushed in to stand between Witte and Minnesota’s Corky Taylor, who had committed the foul.

Then Taylor walked around the ref, extended his hands to help Witte to his feet, and when Witte stood up, Taylor kneed him in the family jewels.

I swear it happened.

And the next 95 seconds were chaos. Minnesota’s Ron Behagen, who had fouled out, came off the bench and stomped on Witte’s head.

Fans came out of their seats and joined the melee.

Minnesota backup Dave Winfield – yes, that Dave Winfield – joined the fray. Winfield became a Hall of Fame baseball player. He was a college baseball star who would play against OU in the College World Series.

Winfield also was a good basketball player. But his hardwood claim to fame is that brawl. A variety of outlets – including the Minneapolis Star and Sports Illustrated – reported that Winfield pummeled an Ohio State player who was down on the ground. Among the primary sources was Oklahoma’s own Max Nichols, a Star columnist at the time who later returned to Oklahoma as editor of the Journal Record.

We’ll let the Star Tribune take over:

“The game was promptly called off. Witte was removed on a stretcher, suffering from a concussion and a gashed chin that required stitches at the university hospital. Two of his Buckeyes teammates were also hospitalized.

“Big Ten Commissioner Wayne Duke, who was in the stands, slapped Taylor and Behagen with season-ending suspensions for what Ohio’s governor called ‘a public mugging.’

“He wasn’t the only one outraged. The Chicago Tribune called the debacle ‘revolting beatings carried out by Gopher players and fans’ exhibiting ‘crazed animal behavior.’ Sports Illustrated labeled the outburst ‘an ugly, cowardly display of violence … when it was over, when the police and officials had finally restored order, the fans had the audacity to boo Witte as he was helped, bleeding and semiconscious, from the floor.”

The story gets even richer. Winfield escaped punishment and in fact moved into the Minnesota starting lineup.
Nichols, writing for the Minneapolis Star, said Winfield apparently was not caught on tape assaulting Ohio State players, but Nichols blasted the Big Ten and the university’s Assembly Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics, which also issued suspensions of Taylor and Behagen.

That committee included three students. Winfield was one of the students, though he apparently did not take part in the vote.

And Minnesota coach Bill Musselman came under great scrutiny. Musselman, who died in 2000 at age 59, eventually coached in the ABA for the San Diego Sails and the Virginia Squires, and in the NBA for the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Minnesota Timberwolves. His son, Eric Musselman, is the head coach at Arkansas.

Bill Musselman already had a reputation as an intense coach, and at his previous stop, Ashland College in Ohio, Musselman’eltactics had been frequently questioned by a philosophy professor at the school. That professor? Wayne Witte, father of Luke.

But the story has a happy ending. In 2003, Corky Taylor invited to his home Luke Witten, who had gone into the ministry. “They watched the video,” the Star Tribune reported, “talked it out and called themselves friends from that day forward.”


Go Gophers!!
 




I was there sitting about 10 rows up in the corner where fight broke out. A naive 18 year old freshman who had never witnessed such violence before. It was literally a street fight on the court including fans coming out of stands to join in. The atmosphere was so intense that night and the referees did a poor job of controlling the physical play on both sides.
 


I don't mean to sound dumb, but this was before my time. What was left out? That's about the story I heard.

The back story that is almost never told is that Witte was talking racist trash the whole game and the narrative of the Gophers being all at fault is incomplete at best. What is also rarely told is that Witte and Corky reconciled in a peaceful manner and held no grudges. Maybe the retellers could include that, too.

My understanding is that Corky was always a pretty mild mannered guy. Witte was an admitted jerk who found God is now in ministry in some capacity.

If this guy thinks that this was the worst brawl in sports history, he hasn't seen highlights of hooligan soccer in Eurpoe and South America.

By the way, I am just old enough to remember the incident happening but didn't witness the details.
 

I affectionately refer to this event as the "Minnesota Nutcracker." ?
 


I don't mean to sound dumb, but this was before my time. What was left out? That's about the story I heard.
Holyman told some of the story. At halftime, the Gophers Rob Nix took an elbow from an OSU player while leaving the court. Ohio State sports was still all white at that time, there was racial tension the entire game. What some of the Gophers did was horrible, but to think OSU had no part in the incident is just wrong.
 




Every time I go to Al's Breakfast, (about once per decade), some guy regales me with the story of that game. It may be the same guy every time, I don't know.
 

Holyman told some of the story. At halftime, the Gophers Rob Nix took an elbow from an OSU player while leaving the court. Ohio State sports was still all white at that time, there was racial tension the entire game. What some of the Gophers did was horrible, but to think OSU had no part in the incident is just wrong.

What OSU did, or allegedly did, really doesn't matter. I was there and what Taylor and Behagen did was simply inexcusable. Taylor kneed him right in the groin while helping him up. Behagen could have or should have been arrested for assault. I must have been sitting close to Duker and Behagen stomped on Witte's head directly more than once. Not sure if Winfield beat on somebody, but I can still see him chasing an OSU player around the court.

Witte might have thrown the elbow or had been saying things, but the whole thing blew up because they were beating us in a game that Musselman had fired up everybody about winning. You could just see the frustration building as OSU took control of the game. Every call by the refs in the second half was met with howls from the crowd.
 

The scuttlebutt at the time was that there was a gentlemen's agreement among Big Ten coaches not to recruit Behagen or Taylor because of their reputation that Mussleman ignored.
 



I was an 11 year old boy who listened in my home in Rochester to the whole game on the radio. I have a few memories of all this, of course......

The other scuttlebutt at the time was that the unwritten rule in the Big Ten was you had to have three white starters and ONLY two African American starters. Musselman in his first year blew that "guideline" out of the water. Jim Brewer was a holdover starter. Clyde Turner and Ron Behagen were recruited out of junior colleges and started from the day they hit campus. Keith Young (from Columbus, Ohio) was the 4th African-American starter. Bob Nix was the point guard, a Caucasian guy also form a junior college (Texas I think). His game meshed well with the 4 other guys; he was a *tough* point guard. part of the problem with the Gophers that year was they played a style with very very very tough defense that the Big Ten was not used to at the time.

Continuing the scuttlebutt, the word was the "traditional" Big Ten coaches (read, Ohios Ste's Taylor) were absolutely *pissed* at Musselman for this "guideline violation and some other stuff, especially his informal reaction "I am here at Minnesota to win the Big ten Title.....). Most of this stuff was not public at the time, of course, but they underlying racial "line" was there, and Minnesota took a bad rap for a lot of this "They're too intense!" was kind of a code word, at least imho...

Combine all this with a crowd of 19,000 at Williams (no fire marshall rules in those days....) and the racial taunting from OSU players and it was pretty combustible.

I was not there. I was 11 years old and listening to Ray Christensen call the game on the radio. Ray was an awful nice guy, but implied a few times that OSU was "getting the benefit of the doubt" on some calls. That and the very involved crowd may have added to the volatility. My memory of Ray's call was that when it all happened he was having difficulty describing it "This is awful.....just awful......."

Taylor and Witte have never said what was said in the midst of the incident. I think it is best left to them to allow it to "peacefully die"; I am glad they reconciled.

When this comes up on national media, they most often do not get into any of the racial undertones. Gophers were hardly innocent of course, but just faulting them exclusively misses so so much of the story.

One telling point is that in retrospectives of the game, you *never* hear of the OSU players who were there agreeing to the narrative that "it was all the Gophers' fault". I am thinking of Witte but also Allan Hornycack (sp.?) I think Winfield has said very little publicly about, even in his book he just said something like "it was sad and unfortunate"
 

What OSU did, or allegedly did, really doesn't matter. I was there and what Taylor and Behagen did was simply inexcusable. Taylor kneed him right in the groin while helping him up. Behagen could have or should have been arrested for assault. I must have been sitting close to Duker and Behagen stomped on Witte's head directly more than once. Not sure if Winfield beat on somebody, but I can still see him chasing an OSU player around the court.

Witte might have thrown the elbow or had been saying things, but the whole thing blew up because they were beating us in a game that Musselman had fired up everybody about winning. You could just see the frustration building as OSU took control of the game. Every call by the refs in the second half was met with howls from the crowd.


Witte SPIT in his face. That is why he kneed him in the groin. OSU's coach was known to be a racist POS, and all of the OSU players were white and some of them were making racist remarks to the Gopher players. There was an unspoken rule among Big Ten coaches at that time that each team could have 1 or 2 token blacks on their roster, but it would be preferred if they were not in the starting lineup. But Musselman came in and recruited several black players, which rubbed all of the other Big Ten coaches the wrong way, especially OSU's outwardly racist coach.

Btw, after Witte had his Christian conversion experience, the guilt got to him and he confessed to spitting in his face. He had denied it before.
 

Witte SPIT in his face. That is why he kneed him in the groin. OSU's coach was known to be a racist POS, and all of the OSU players were white and some of them were making racist remarks to the Gopher players. There was an unspoken rule among Big Ten coaches at that time that each team could have 1 or 2 token blacks on their roster, but it would be preferred if they were not in the starting lineup. But Musselman came in and recruited several black players, which rubbed all of the other Big Ten coaches the wrong way, especially OSU's outwardly racist coach.

Btw, after Witte had his Christian conversion experience, the guilt got to him and he confessed to spitting in his face. He had denied it before.
And, to put it kindly, you're full of it. Wardell Jackson was one of the better Buckeye players and he most definitely wasn't white. Not on that team but I remember watching Jim Cleamons play for Taylor in the early 70's and he also didn't look that white. There was definitely a racial undertone as to what happened, but just because Taylor claimed that the pre-game warm-up basically caused the fight and riot, doesn't make him a racist POS.

Love your unspoken rule claim. Before Musselman, the Gophers had Lou Hudson, Archie Clark, and Don Yates so apparently John Kundla got into trouble for starting 3 black players. You also might want to check Michigan's rosters during the 60's. The racial make-up of teams was a lot different but it's total bullshit on your part to claim there some pact among coaches and claim all the league's coaches were racist.

Finally, I was there. Witte was clobbered so damn hard he was too dazed to spit on anyone. He never got totally erect. He was on the way up when he got kneed. Taylor claimed he was spit on, retracted it, and then went back and forth with the story. I've read several narrations by Witte about what happened and he never confessed to spitting, even after he became religious, Btw. Most he ever said was Nix raised his arm in front of him at halftime; he brushed it away; and happened to clip Nix by accident. That very well might be B.S. but I don't think it warrants a beating resulting in over 20 stitches, eye damage, and a stay in the hospital.

It's okay not to make excuses for Gopher athletes--especially when it's full of untruths.
 

My dad used to talk about that Ohio State game once in while, even though I think he just listened to it on the radio and read about it. He spoke of it, did give any real opinions on it, but I sensed he sort liked what Musselman was doing with the program.

I'd like more of these writers who dredge up the story, to actually do some reporting and give us some real context to such a compelling story built on racial and societal warts.

I doubt I'll ever see the true context , but I'd like to know more about the black starter quota, the role Fred Taylor played in that allegation, and if Witte and others were throwing around KKK terminology that night.

It sounds like there may be some smoke on these allegations, but the historical record sanitizes or buries it all, or so it seems.

I guess Mulligan sees it all differently, but there seems to be something going on there.

It is odd in this day and PC, snowflake world, one team (Wisconsin) often has 5 white players on the floor and a bunch of white guys sitting on the end of the bench, while a team like Illinois, a couple of hours away is the opposite.

I am hardly accusing anyone of anything, but this is just strange. What does this imply about Wisconsin Basketball, Bo Ryan, and Gard? I am not really sure, but it is not exactly random.

Oh I forgot, Wisconsin seems to be trying to lead the world back the the 1970s by promoting short shorts as well.

What happened, they woke up one day in Madison and told Barry, hey let's bring back short shorts, and we are the team to lead the revolution!

My god, Trice looks like John Stockton out there and I just noticed that the nut punching flopper from Maple Grove has sort stumpy looking, plumber like legs, something not visible his Freshman year, since the shorts were much longer.

Next year, maybe they can bring back the really short shorts.
 
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Witte SPIT in his face. That is why he kneed him in the groin. OSU's coach was known to be a racist POS, and all of the OSU players were white and some of them were making racist remarks to the Gopher players. There was an unspoken rule among Big Ten coaches at that time that each team could have 1 or 2 token blacks on their roster, but it would be preferred if they were not in the starting lineup. But Musselman came in and recruited several black players, which rubbed all of the other Big Ten coaches the wrong way, especially OSU's outwardly racist coach.

Btw, after Witte had his Christian conversion experience, the guilt got to him and he confessed to spitting in his face. He had denied it before.
Dude. There's literally footage from the game, posted a couple posts above yours, that disproves this fabrication.

For the record, the "1 or 2 token blacks on the roster" is complete BS. Also I'll need to see a reference for your "Witte...confessed to spitting in his face" claim, because I'm 99 percent sure that's BS as well.
 


Why in the world would OSU not want blacks on their basketball squad? It’s a scientifically proven fact that they are better leapers and runners than are white basketballers.
 
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AN article about OSU recruiting with a more nuanced view of Taylor

 




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