He threw a punch and then he threw a fit and then he was the one thrown, LeGarrette Blount tossed from the Oregon football team minus five yards into his senior season.

LeGarrette Blount?

On Thursday morning, it was a name known throughout Eugene and probably a couple of smaller communities in which he had played growing up.

On Friday morning, it was a name recognized across the nation as everything wrong and evil in college sports.

It’s funny. We want our athletes to be mean, nasty and assertive, our football players to be hostile and punishing.

Then one of them goes a step too far and we react with disbelieving horror, as if shocked that these games include real, raw emotion.

What, a person who plays a sport based on violence and brutality is capable of losing composure, too?

Stunning.

What Blount did was indefensible. You don’t throw fists in football. He has had other problems at Oregon — missed classes and workouts, bad behavior in practice — and it was the school’s right to take football Saturdays from him.

Thousands of college kids will play games on Saturday and half of them will lose.

Yet, nearly every one of those on the short end of the score will exit the field without incident.

That’s just part of the process.

It’s called learning, growing up.

But let’s not make Blount out to be the worst thing sports have ever seen.

Let’s keep our perspective. Let’s maintain a grip better than he did when punching Boise State’s Byron Hout.

First of all, Blount was provoked. Hout not only mocked him but also shoved him, and that shove — even if it wasn’t terribly forceful — was the most significant contributor to the punch being thrown.

The guess here is if Hout had not made contact, Blount likewise would have reacted only verbally, not physically.

It doesn’t take a psychology degree to realize Blount has issues with his temper.

But it also doesn’t take a behavioral science degree to understand that 22 isn’t an age when most people have reached full maturity.

An Ohio State coach named Woody Hayes punched a Clemson player during the 1978 Gator Bowl.

At the time, Hayes was 65.

Again, we’re only guessing here, but the thought is Blount is no idiot and neither is Hout. What, exactly, did Hout think would happen when he made contact? Chiding Blount was one thing, but touching him in that manner, at that moment, was wrong, too.

Yeah, we know, other players possess as much if not more passion and they don’t punch opponents.

That’s correct, but we’re also thinking that some who criticized Blount would have reacted similarly.

See, that’s one of the problems with preaching against Tiger Woods’ miserable temper. It’s tough for us because we have done the same things, grunted those same words playing the same sport.

In August, Blount missed a few Ducks practices to be with a dying great aunt who had helped raise him.

Upon rejoining the team, he said, “I’m definitely coming in with a more mature mind-set.”

Turns out, that was a crock.

But so is the idea that LeGarrette Blount is so far removed from the rest of us.