My freshman year was 1999 my Work-study job was that I did all the video work for the team. We videoed practices and games then but the footage in to a system for the coaches to review with the players. So for four years of school 99-03 I watched every single practice from the beginning of Summer two a days to the end of spring practice. I also went to all the road games and bowl games including Insight.com, Hawaii, Music City and Motor city. After I graduated I have stayed very close to the team. I work for a video production company who makes the recruiting video, we did all the videos in the Kiosks of the Museum, also some of the videos on the Jumbo-tron. Because of this I am over there very often and also travel with the team still. I have lot of friends in the program and the reason I defend GD so much is I happen to know him personally and am friends with his daughter. I've never felt the need to divulge exactly how close I am with the team but now I think is the time.
Most of the dust ups I witnessed while watching the practices through the years were basically at the end of a play there is some extra pushing and shoving that goes on, this builds up and eventually it gets a little more physical. It happens more often then you think, when the press is there it gets turned into a big deal. Other times it happens when the OL-DL do 1on1s. This is basically when they put a tkling dummy behind an OLman and the DLman tries to get by him to sack the tkling dummy. This gets very heated because you can easily show someone up if you make them look silly by dominating them.
This past dust-up was merely a result of pushing and shoving happening through out practice. Not that big of a deal. It means the kids are fired up and ready to play a real game. Sometimes practices are kind of a cock-tease especially after a devastating lose. They want to hit some one for real and when they can't they hold in this emotion that just gets realized eventually. Trust me you would rather them have a dust up then be flat in practice. That is when we really have to worry.
You can take this or leave it but it's my opinion. We will be ok. We may not play in the ACC Championship game this year but we won't lose more than 3 games. We'll be fine.