Foolish fisticuffs a punch to the gut for Jayhawks

The video shows the players loading into a white van, one by one, so that they could be driven away safely from the scene of their second fight in less than 24 hours. It was shot by the student newspaper -- now it's linked all over the country. And is this any way to begin a quest to win a second national title in three years?

Ladies and gentlemen, your 2009-10 Kansas Jayhawks: They'll warn you on Facebook, then fight you on campus.

'Keep my name out ya' mouth for you get smacked in it,' writes Tyshawn Taylor on Facebook. (AP)

"N-ggers be muggin me .. you know I'm muggin back," KU guard Tyshawn Taylor posted on his Facebook account Tuesday, just before he got around to muggin back. "Keep my name out ya' mouth for you get smacked in it."

Few hours after typing those words, Taylor commenced to trying to smack somebody -- a Kansas football player, specifically. Unfortunately, he only managed a dislocated finger that'll keep him sidelined three to four weeks. But what's a man to do when his name is in somebody else's mouth? Can't very well sit there and not mug back, not when the goal is to always be a "G" about it.

Yes, Taylor posted that, too.

•  Kansas players sorry

He's like Tupac with a better jumper.

Anyway, the sophomore updated his Facebook account for the final time early Wednesday, and I really thought that was the end of it. I was working on a Herb Sendek column, just minding my own business. But then the Kansas basketball and football teams got into a second fight -- Round 2, baby! -- late Wednesday morning, and this can't be good for the long-term health of Bill Self's top-ranked Jayhawks.

For starters, there's a numbers problem. Football teams get 85 scholarships; basketball teams only get 13. So every basketball player needs to handle roughly 6.5 football players for this to end well, and I don't like their chances considering football players are generally bigger and stronger. You let a linebacker get hold of a small forward, and the small forward is in trouble. If nothing else, we learned that from watching Floyd Mayweather Jr. beat up Juan Manuel Marquez. And that's why I believe the only player who is truly safe going forward is Sherron Collins, because if he's fast enough to avoid getting fouled by Derrick Rose in the final seconds of a national title game, he's got to be fast enough to avoid getting punched by Dezmon Briscoe in the final year of his eligibility.

Either way, this is bad.

Bad for KU.

Bad for Self.

These Jayhawks should be a tremendous story -- the consensus No. 1 team just two years removed from losing five starters from a roster that produced a national title. It's a stunning rebuilding effort, perhaps the best ever. And yet that's not what anybody is talking about this week, all because Tyshawn Taylor threw a punch at a football player Tuesday, and then one of the Morris Twins -- either Marcus or Markieff -- reportedly tossed a different football player down a flight of stairs early Wednesday.

To date, the KU police have been called three times.

No charges have been filed.

But impressions have been made, videos linked. And regardless of who started it or why it escalated to this level, the lasting image from the past 24 hours will be of an assistant athletic director ushering Collins and many of his teammates to a van so that they can be driven from Point A to Point B without further incident. That's embarrassing. But the good news is that Tyshawn Taylor stayed true to his word and conducted himself like somebody who is "always a G about it."

I can't know for sure what he means by that, of course.

But if G stands for goshdamnidiot then, yeah, I think he nailed it.