[Brian Swartz]

To my mind that's not a larger issue, it's a completely different issue. Jawing between teams happens all the time in between plays on the field. Why wouldn't we expect it to happen off the field also? The scale and type of the encounters are not remotely comparable.

I primarily blame the coaching staff of both teams for those kinds of situations if there is escalation beyond that. It's just as much an issue of team discipline as not committing false starts or off-sides on a critical down.

Harbaugh is an arrogant jerk, which is pretty much par for the course for major college football head coaches, and the fanbase basically loves him for it; many fans would be fine with their coach coming off the sideline to slug an opposing player in the face a la Woody Hayes as long as they are winning (that's not a shot at Ohio State, they did the right thing and fired him. It's a general observation on the sport). It's no surprise that he decided to hypocritically and pointlessly stir things up in the press with Franklin a couple of weeks ago. But again, there is just a massive difference here between players pumped up and obnoxiously running their mouth, and actually having violence of the extracurricular variety break out.