West Virginia’s Saturday got off to a fast start on the field, but the first scene to really turn heads came well before kickoff in Morgantown.
The Mountaineers were hosting UT Martin and had opened the day 1-0 as they looked to keep building early momentum under Rich Rodriguez. By halftime, West Virginia was already ahead 28-0. But in the Blue Lot, the action briefly had nothing to do with football.
Video shared by Old Row showed a West Virginia fan in a bluish-gray shirt throwing another man in a black shirt to the ground. The man who was taken down had a camera hanging from his neck, suggesting he may have been recording the tailgate atmosphere before getting pulled into the confrontation himself.
A shirtless fan jumped in quickly and grabbed the man in gray, pulling him away from the fight. That didn’t end things right away. A woman standing near the man in gray took issue with the shirtless fan stepping in and struck him a few times before he backed away into the crowd.
After that, the situation appeared to settle. Bystanders were seen reacting throughout the clip, with some people filming the scene on their phones instead of getting involved.
The Blue Lot has long been known as one of the biggest tailgating spots on West Virginia’s campus, drawing season-ticket holders, major donors and thousands of fans hours before the gates open. Its packed RV setups and tight crowds can make it a place where tensions boil over fast.
That’s not just a West Virginia issue, either. Fights among fans have become a more common sight around college football tailgates this season, and similar scenes have shown up inside arenas as well. West Virginia’s athletic department dealt with its own bout of chaos earlier this year when a women’s basketball game against Duke ended with six total ejections after a bench-clearing skirmish.
It remains unclear whether the Blue Lot incident led to any arrests or injuries. With the video spreading quickly online, it figures to be one of the more talked-about moments from a day that eventually belonged to the Mountaineers on the scoreboard.
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