So, apparently a whole bunch of people noticed the little skirmish after the game between Jimmy Clausen and Rich Gunnell. I did, too.
To catch you up if you didn’t, Jimmy went over to shake hands with Gunnell, presumably to congratulate him on shredding the Irish secondary, and Gunnell stuck a finger in Jimmy’s face wanting nothing to do with it. Jimmy lightly shoved him away, walked off, and that was it.
Here’s Jimmy’s side of it:
“To be honest I was just going up to him to say he’s a heck of a
receiver and if you saw out there, he was making plays left and right,
and he’s a real good talent. I was just going to say good game to him,
and he was just a little frustrated I guess. I was just trying to say
good game to him.”
Here’s Gunnell’s side of it:
“In the beginning of the game, we were warming up, running on the field
and he’s out there chirping and talking all this trash and he
pushed, I think, Justin Jarvis. He just pushed him for no reason, and I just looked at him like, ‘What are you doing? Who do you think you are?’“He’s
just sitting there still talking and then afterward, he was trying to
be all friendly. I was like, ‘I don’t want to hear it now.'”
I’m not ready to make any radical statements about either player. If Jimmy was talking trash before the game, then I can see Gunnell’s point. That said, I highly doubt that Clausen was the only guy out there chirping, and would be surprised if he was out shoving a 6-foot-5 wide receiver in pregame, especially with the love fest that was going on between teams.
At worst, it was a semi-bush league move by Gunnell to be putting fingers in Clausen’s face after the game while he’s trying to congratulate you on a good game, but I’ve got no problem with the way either guy handled it.