Butera needs to make strong statement against Quincy Butler

Adam Markowitz
Sunday May 3, 2015

It was known as the "Malice at the Palace." Ron Artest went into the stands and mixed it up with fans in Detroit, and he earned a 73-regular season game suspension for his actions.

There was a major difference between what the artist currently known as Metta World Peace did and what Quincy Butler of the Portland Thunder did last night. Artest was provoked, and he went into the stands with his fists. Butler wasn't provoked by anything but his own emotions, and he injured an innocent bystander in the process.

Butler and the Thunder were having a frustrating night in the City of Brotherly Love. The team was down 35-21 in the third quarter, and the Soul were driving to reinstate a three-touchdown lead. Butler, who had just been called for holding Marco Thomas on the previous play, was blocked by Ryan McDaniel on a tight end screen. The two tumbled to the ground, and a fracas broke out on the sidelines.

Thomas, who was essentially the third man into the grappling between Butler and McDaniel, was issued a personal foul and was ejected. He immediately went back through the tunnel and into the annals of the Wells Fargo Center. Butler, who was also given a personal foul and was ejected, stuck around on the field for a bit, went to go speak with one of the officials, and flung his helmet in frustration after the conversation.

My estimation is that he was trying to throw his helmet into the boards. Instead, that helmet went flying into the stands and struck a woman who was sitting in one of the front rows.

Even though Butler was immediately remorseful for his actions (and Darron Thomas deserves credit for being right on the scene to try to do damage control), to me, this is as ugly as it gets in sports. You cannot, under any circumstance whatsoever, chuck anything into the stands that can hurt a fan. I've seen players throw their gloves up in the stands or their wrist bands or whatever, and that in and of itself is completely unacceptable and warrants punishment. But at least wrist bands and rubbery gloves aren't going to seriously hurt someone. This could have literally ended a life of an unsuspecting fan in the name of rage.

Helmets are specifically designed so 300 pound men can slam into each other without suffering life-threatening injuries. If they can withstand that type of impact 70 times a game, you can imagine what type of damage they can do to a fan who has no padding on and has less than a second to respond to the oncoming projectile.

Butler has a history with assault in his past from his days with the Calgary Stampeders. He pled guilty to assaulting a taxi driver last May and was immediately suspended by the Stamps for his actions before he even went to court.

Butler owed the cab driver $10,000 in restitution and was handed 18 months of probation and 175 hours of community service. Furthermore, immigration officials ruled that he was no longer eligible to work in Canada, forcing him to leave the CFL.

Even though by definition, Butler isn't a repeat offender of bad behavior in the AFL, let's call this what it is. It's assault. And it's assault with a potentially deadly weapon.

If Quincy Butler had taken his helmet with him in the outside world and flung it nowhere in particular, had he struck someone, he would have been arrested on the spot. Why he wasn't arrested on Saturday is beyond me.

Even though the court of law didn't immediately have anything to say about Butler's actions, the court of the Arena Football League can still have its say.

There is only one thing here for Scott Butera to do. Butler needs to be, at minimum, suspended for the remainder of the 2015 season, and at maximum, banned from the sport. This writer would much prefer the latter. The Thunder should also immediately cut ties with Butler, whether that be through his reassignment or a team-issued suspension.

If you sit in the front rows of an AFL game, you are warned about objects flying into the stands. Of course, those objects are supposed to include players who are legally tackled into the boards, footballs which are thrown into the stands and those free shirts that every team catapults or throws out to fans. Not helmets thrown into the stands by players who have already been ejected from the game.

There's just no room for this in sports, and there is no room for this in the Arena Football League.

And now, for my money, there is no room for Quincy Butler in the AFL either.