NCAA cracking down on weapon gestures toward opponents in college football

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NCAA cracking down on weapon gestures toward opponents in college football

2024-10-09 04:24 Last Updated At：04:30

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — College football is on high alert for players flashing make-believe guns at an opponent.

That happened Saturday when freshman edge rusher Dylan Stewart, who sacked Mississippi quarterback Jaxson Dart for a loss of eight yards on third down, stood over him and pretended to shoot his opponent with a repeating firearm.

Stewart was called for unsportsmanlike conduct and South Carolina was penalized 15 yards.

The flag did not deter Stewart, who celebrated the same way — he got off three shots of his pretend shotgun — a few minutes later after stopping Rebels runner Matt Jones for a 4-yard loss. No penalty was called on that play.

At Minnesota, defensive back Justin Walley broke up a pass in his team's 24-17 win over then-No. 11 Southern California, then lifted up his shirt as if he were showing a handgun sticking out of his waistband.

Walley was flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct for what the official said was “simulating brandishing a gun.”

“There’s a list of automatic unsportsmanlike conduct fouls. One of them in our rule book is simulating firing of a weapon,” Steve Shaw, the NCAA’s national coordinator of officials, told The Associated Press by phone Tuesday. “That’s not really a judgement call.”

It seems like a case of bad judgement by the players who consider those actions when they celebrate. The incidents show the NCAA sending a message to keep violence, even the pretend kind, out of its game.

“We're starting to see, I hate to say it, but more and more of it,” Shaw said. “We're just trying to say that's not acceptable. Gun violence is not acceptable in our game.”

It can be difficult to get that message to young players like Stewart, who turned 19 last month and has had an immediate impact on the Gamecocks' defense. He's had 3.5 sacks and 5.5 tackles behind the line of scrimmage in his first five college games.

Such displays are sometimes seen in the NFL. Jets receiver Allen Lazard was penalized for firing finger guns after a first-down catch against Denver two weeks ago. He was also fined $14,069 for “unsportsmanlike conduct for a violent gesture,” according to the NFL.

South Carolina coach Shane Beamer said he spoke with Stewart after the penalty and he's talked with all his players about reducing pre-snap and post-play infractions.

The gesture was “unacceptable,” Beamer said “And Dylan Stewart feels awful about that play. Dylan Stewart's a really good kid, and Dylan Stewart's mom feels awful about that play.”

Minnesota coach P.J. Fleck said at his weekly news conference that he tells his players to celebrate with teammates and not leave themselves open to an officials' interpretation of their actions.

“In our world right now, we’re talking about everybody should express themselves, rightfully so,” Fleck said. “Sometimes we’re flagging a particular move, sometimes we’re not. Our whole thing to counter that is don’t leave it up to somebody to interpret something the wrong way.”

Dart, who leads the Southeastern Conference in passing, responded to Stewart's fake shooting on social media, quoting late rapper Young Dolph's song, “100 Shots."

"How the ... you miss a whole hunnid shots?" Dart said, using a line from the song after the Rebels' 27-3 victory.

Shaw said players have to understand they can celebrate in creative ways after big plays. He after the NCAA penalized the throat slash gesture, some players turned to a simulated nose wipe, which is not against the rules.

NCAA spokesman Greg Johnson said Shaw recently sent around a reminder in mid-September to conferences and their football officials to emphasize treating weapon gestures as penalties.

“This was done with the goal of this rule being officiated consistently on a national basis,” Johnson said.

Beamer said he'll keep any punishment for Stewart inside South Carolina's football building. Young people make mistakes, he said, and that's when you help them make the right decisions going forward.

“It's our job to help," Beamer said, "like a parent would do with a child.”

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Death toll in attack on Christmas market in Germany rises to 5, with more than 200 injured

2024-12-21 19:29 Last Updated At：19:30

MAGDEBURG, Germany (AP) — Germans on Saturday mourned both the victims and their shaken sense of security after a Saudi doctor intentionally drove into a Christmas market teeming with holiday shoppers, killing at least five people, including a small child, and injuring at least 200 others.

Authorities arrested a 50-year-old man at the site of the attack in Magdeburg on Friday evening and took him into custody for questioning. He has lived in Germany for nearly two decades, practicing medicine in Bernburg, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Magdeburg. officials said.

The governor of the surrounding state of Saxony-Anhalt, Reiner Haseloff, told reporters that the death toll rose from two to five and that more than 200 people in total were injured.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that nearly 40 of them "are so seriously injured that we must be very worried about them.”

Several German media outlets identified the suspect as Taleb A., withholding his last name in line with privacy laws, and reported that he was a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy.

Mourners lit candles and placed flowers outside a church near the market on the cold and gloomy day. Several people stopped and cried. A Berlin church choir whose members witnessed a previous Christmas market attack in 2016 sang Amazing Grace, a hymn about God's mercy, offering their prayers and solidarity with the victims.

There were still no answers Saturday as to what caused him to drive into a crowd in the eastern German city of Magdeburg.

Describing himself as a former Muslim, the suspect shared dozens of tweets and retweets daily focusing on anti-Islam themes, criticizing the religion and congratulating Muslims who left the faith.

He also accused German authorities of failing to do enough to combat what he said was the “Islamism of Europe.” Some described him as an activist who helped Saudi women flee their homeland. He has also voiced support for the far-right and anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

Recently, he seemed focused on his theory that German authorities have been targeting Saudi asylum seekers.

Prominent German terrorism expert Peter Neumann said he had yet to come across a suspect in an act of mass violence with that profile.

“After 25 years in this ‘business’ you think nothing could surprise you anymore. But a 50-year-old Saudi ex-Muslim who lives in East Germany, loves the AfD and wants to punish Germany for its tolerance towards Islamists — that really wasn’t on my radar, " Neumann, the director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence at King’s College London, wrote on X.

“As things stand, he is a lone perpetrator, so that as far as we know there is no further danger to the city,” Saxony-Anhalt’s governor, Reiner Haseloff, told reporters. “Every human life that has fallen victim to this attack is a terrible tragedy and one human life too many.”

The violence shocked Germany and the city, bringing its mayor to the verge of tears and marring a festive event that’s part of a centuries-old German tradition. It prompted several other German towns to cancel their weekend Christmas markets as a precaution and out of solidarity with Magdeburg’s loss. Berlin kept its markets open but has increased its police presence at them.

Germany has suffered a string of extremist attacks in recent years, including a knife attack that killed three people and wounded eight at a festival in the western city of Solingen in August.

Magdeburg is a city of about 240,000 people, west of Berlin, that serves as Saxony-Anhalt’s capital. Friday’s attack came eight years after an Islamic extremist drove a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing 13 people and injuring many others. The attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.

Chancellor Scholz and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser traveled to Magdeburg on Saturday, and a memorial service is to take place in the city cathedral in the evening. Faeser ordered flags lowered to half-staff at federal buildings across the country.

Verified bystander footage distributed by the German news agency dpa showed the suspect’s arrest at a tram stop in the middle of the road. A nearby police officer pointing a handgun at the man shouted at him as he lay prone, his head arched up slightly. Other officers swarmed around the suspect and took him into custody.

Thi Linh Chi Nguyen, a 34-year-old manicurist from Vietnam whose salon is located in a mall across from the Christmas market, was on the phone during a break when she heard loud bangs and thought at first they were fireworks. She then saw a car drive through the market at high speed. People screamed and a child was thrown into the air by the car.

Shaking as she described the horror of what she witnessed, she recalled seeing the car bursting out of the market and turning right onto Ernst-Reuter-Allee street and then coming to a standstill at the tram stop where the suspect was arrested.

The number of injured people was overwhelming.

“My husband and I helped them for two hours. He ran back home and grabbed as many blankets as he could find because they didn’t have enough to cover the injured people. And it was so cold," she said.

The market itself was still cordoned off Saturday with red-and-white tape and police vans every 50 meters (about 54 yards). Police with machine pistols guarded every entry to the market.

Some thermal security blankets still lay on the street.

Christmas markets are a German holiday tradition cherished since the Middle Ages, now successfully exported to much of the Western world.

Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry condemned the attack on X.

Aboubakr reported from Cairo and Gera from Warsaw, Poland.