As some of you might know, I am a pretty huge KU fan. So call my opinion on this bias if you want, but I don’t care. This is the truth.

How It Happened

Let me take you back to earlier in the college basketball season. Kansas is playing a small school in Monmouth, up 110-55, and they are dribbling the clock out with seconds left in the game. Then, a Monmouth player comes from behind and steals it from the KU player dribbling it out, dunks it, then goes on to curse off the KU fans over their loud boos. This is important, because K-State tried to pull the same thing on Tuesday. Silvio De Souza, up 81-59, dribbled the ball over half court as the clock was winding down on another beatdown of little brother Kansas State. Then the K-state player comes out of nowhere, picks Silvio’s pocket, and is taking it the other way. After what transpired against Monmouth, Silvio was not going to let this BS happen again. He ran down the K state guard going for the layup and sent it to the moon with an emphatic pin against the backboard. He had some words to say to the player as he laid helplessly on the ground. All of a sudden, the ENTIRE K-state bench clears and starts going after Silvio. One player pushed Silvio to the ground, and in a state of self defense, he started throwing punches. Stupid, I know, but put yourself in his shoes. In his eyes, he was surrounded, so he acted accordingly. One thing led to another, but things never really got out of hand, as no punches were landed and no one got hurt. Silvio did pick up a stool with the intent to use it, which is ridiculous, but he dropped it as his judgement kicked in. That is what happened. K-State started the fight, KU made it worse. Both teams should be held accountable, suspend the players involved, and move on.

The Ridiculous Overreaction

After the game, people on twitter had some pretty ridiculous takes. It was either people saying Silvio should be kicked out of CBB, or people using this incident to push their agenda of KU being a dirty program. First, I will discuss the latter of the two arguments. It is true that Kansas has had some hiccups in the past couple years. From the stuff with the FBI, players getting suspended every year (Cliff Alexander, Cheick Diallo, Billy Preston, Legarald Vick, to name a few), it has not been a great couple years for KU in terms of public perception. However, using a little fight between two rivals to justify the opinion that Kansas runs a dirty program is asinine and lazy. There is zero correlation between the two whatsoever. It was the perfect storm. The picture of Silvio and the stool. The fact that the person who was at the center of the brawl was Silvio De Souza, a guy suspended for an entire season due to receiving illegal benefits. It was the perfect time to attack Kansas, as the reputation of the program was incredibly vulnerable. So anyone who had an agenda to fulfill took upon the opportunity and pounced. As for the people calling for Silvio’s head *cough* Seth Greenberg *cough*, I want you to take a moment an self reflect. Before you call for a young, black man to face legal action for picking up and stool and deciding not to use it, think about baseball for a second. Why is it okay for there to be fights in baseball? Why is the public so quick to view basketball players as “monsters” and “out of control” when they get into fights, but when it happens in baseball, it is “apart of the game”. An “unwritten rule”. The answer is so painfully obvious to anyone with enough guts to put their pride and ego aside, and just look at it from a logical perspective. Baseball is a predominantly white sport, while basketball is predominantly black. Race is a very tricky thing to discuss, especially for a 17 year old white kid with no idea how the world works. But I am going to give it my best effort. I find it pretty disgraceful that Seth Greenberg went on national television and called for legal action to be taken on Silvio. Yes, picking up the stool with the intent to use it was dumb. But please, for the love of god, stop using hypotheticals of “what if he used it” to fit a racist, pre-existing agenda of wanting to jump the gun and punish the 20 year old black student athlete, and then make excuses for the *professional athletes* for fighting over getting hit by a baseball when they are grown ups making millions of dollars a year. Silvio was wrong. But lets ask ourselves here, do we really want to punish a young man for *almost* making a terrible decision. And if you still do, ask yourself if you would have a different reaction if he was white.