Lost in the aftermath of Clemson's Fiesta Bowl routing of Ohio State, was this dirty second quarter play by Tiger sophomore defensive end Christian Wilkins on Buckeye junior H-Back Curtis Samuel.
Watch No. 42's right hand:
@BarstoolBigCat @PFTCommenter @BarstoolTrent a little gooch grabbing never hurt anyone, right? pic.twitter.com/oFD5JtVvkP
— Curci B (@bcurc15) January 1, 2017
Normally, groping somebody's genitalia is considered sexual assault. If Wilkins did this at a bar, he would be charged with a crime.
Which is why Wilkins apologized immediately following the game.
I was being silly, and I apologize for that. It's stuff you do when you're competing, and I know that's not a good look. I apologize for that, and I shook hands with him after the game. There were no hard feelings.
"I was just joking, actually" is a classic defense for a sexual predator. As is putting words into the victim's mouth.
For whatever reason, Clemson senior linebacker Ben Boulware expanded on this theme at Fiesta Bowl media day. Apparently groping each other's genitals is just part of football. And if you don't understand that, you're not "a football guy."
Boulware even admitted to similar antics against South Carolina.
That stuff kind of annoys me. The game is so serious and it's so locked in out there, you try to do stuff just to have fun, to break up the seriousness of the game. People are trying to say "sexual assault" — people that say that have either never played football, have never been in a locker room and seen the weird stuff. We're together every day for years and years and years.
You get very comfortable around each other. I know there's going to be that one person: "Well, I played football and never did that." You either sucked at football, you had no friends in the locker room, or you were the person that went in the bathroom stall to go change because you were scared to shower with the team.
We do that stuff just to have fun out there, just to mess with the team. I know none of those players care. I know [South Carolina quarterback] Zach Bailey didn't care about that at all. You saw on film where he didn't freak out. "Do you all practice this at Clemson?" No, we practice beating [South Carolina] by 49 points. That's something I did on the side. It's annoying, because the players don't care. Like you saw [Curtis] Samuel didn't do anything at all.
That's for the media to blow that up. Yes Christian went — he went four fingers deep. He went a little too far. But when I'm just messing with somebody, poking them in the belly button or grabbing someone's butt, it's just to break up the seriousness of the game. The people who are freaking out about that have never played the game, or were just losers who didn't have friends when they played the game.
It's annoying.
You'll notice how, in both cases, the perps hid behind the joke defense and put words in the victims' mouths.
Let's ask Samuel what he thought when he saw the film:
If I would of felt that I would of got ejected!! #sweetness @cwilkins42
— Curtis Samuel (@CurtisSamuel4__) January 1, 2017
We don't rock like that this way https://t.co/NmQWteKpjo
— Curtis Samuel (@CurtisSamuel4__) January 4, 2017
Sounds like it wasn't all fun and games for the guy on the ground getting his genitals groped by a stranger.
Who would have thought?
