Handling Brawls

[Sleeper]

As a general rule of thumb, if we can't keep it from happening, we throw the flags and take numbers. We identify a coach on each sideline as our contact, and he is the person responsible for stepping into the middle of a bad fight. In the chest-bumping slap fests, we let them get tired and then pitch the participants. We will try to get in between them before they start swinging, but the advice we were given by the chapter was to stay out of the middle of a fight for both legal and safety issues. We had a situation in the last game of last season where we had a cheap hit followed by a fight. There were five flags and a hat on the ground, but the coaches did a good job of keeping the bench back and the other players pulled the combatants apart. I have no idea what we would do with a bench clearer. Good idea for pregame planning.