There is an unfortunate Great Ape holdover brain reaction that is simply desire-to-dominate. This is one of the central pieces of "natural crap" that we human males have in our limbic systems. (located as push buttons in the Hypothalamus for any neural anatomy nerds out there.) This is also a major reason why we've constructed better and better but never perfect cultures/societies so that everyone is not continually punching and killing one another (though we still have some "cultures" which display these lovable elements almost as an honor badge.) It is also why the better based religions are worth having around, while the overly dogmatic ones don't help so much. (Believe as I do, or I'll kill you.)
So, when uncultured uninhibited males are at loose ends, they tend towards being inhuman apes. Hopefully "BIGGER" more civilized and older partially-evolved humans-in-process are around to roar them into line, and maybe even slap them into line. In Fitzgerald's case, one hopes that this is a "normal" apish issue of what happens with morons when the Big Silverback is not on the scene. I say this because I had a higher opinion of Fitzgerald.
Desire-to-dominate is apish crud purely. But it is reached for a LOT in football (for obvious motivational reasons.) So we play with the apish fire, and count on somehow keeping it contained to just a few behaviors. (In 1960s football, it was a "secret" mantra that an opponent couldn't beat you if he was in the hospital.) In the silence of our minds, we know that this is going to fail a lot. We wink at this because we like football so much, just as we wink at life-shortening head injuries and criminality in athletes no longer "active." I once thought that most high school males should be required to spend at least two years in a boot camp style of training on the consequences of raging ego before being allowed back into "polite company" of high school and general culture. Obviously not practical.
Notre Dame can't completely solve such a basic human flaw, but at least a campus flooded with the concepts of the moral and spiritual will cut it down a bit. Frankly I'm stunned that we don't have more outbreaks like UGA all the time --- a tribute to local media and administrations having high alert news control most moments of the year. When I was at Iowa State for my Masters Degrees, we had a defensive tackle and wrestler who EVERY weekend would be at some bar deliberately trying to put people in the hospital by violent fighting. I thought "put a suit of armor on him and send him to Viet Nam." But we rather put a suit of armor on him and sent him to the line of scrimmage. .... and everybody stood and cheered. .... a hero.
