I love it when scripts to old Three Stooges shorts become real life. You may have known that East Carolina running back Jonathan Williams and defensive back Leonard Paulk were suspended and missed the AutoZone Liberty Bowl, but did you know why?
The Memphis Commercial Appeal reported that Paulk and Williams scuffled during the AutoZone Liberty Bowl awards luncheon and nearly flipped over a table while fighting over a dessert. According to the paper, one player had the other in a headlock and was hitting him.
“Hey, that’s my pudddin’, puddin’ head.”
“Spread out!”
Bonk!
Paulk, a redshirt freshman, and Williams, a junior running back, were suspended indefinitely from the football program.
“We had an incident yesterday that as a football coach I’ve taken about 24 hours to look at, to research and get into amongst our team,” East Carolina coach Skip Holtz told the media covering the event. “I have made the decision to suspend two players for this game. I will suspend running back Jon Williams and defensive back Leonard Paulk. I think both players were equally wrong in this incident. So we have made the decision to suspend them both indefinitely.”
Too me the suspensions could have been avoided if, after the brawl first erupted, someone had just thought fast and yelled “food fight!”
Despite the fact that the incident served to “rally the players,” according to one account, Arkansas went on to beat ECU 20-17 in overtime.
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ECU suspends two for Liberty Bowl [ESPN]
Holtz suspends two for bowl: Williams, Paulk punished after scuffle [DailyMe]
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- KimG - Jan 4, 2010 at 2:04 PM
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Too bad they didn’t get the ECU kicker involved and got him suspended – they may have actually won that game then.
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- blind owl - Jan 4, 2010 at 3:45 PM
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Sounds like those boys are ready to be in the NFL.
