Police Use Tear Gas, Pepper Spray To Break Up OSU Celebrations

As soon as the Buckeyes finished off their championship, fans and students flooded the streets on and around Ohio State's campus. They were largely well-behaved, but it didn't matter: after about 90 minutes, authorities cleared out the area with mounted police, riot cops, liberal use of pepper spray, and even three canisters of tear gas.

The video above shows some of the chaos starting at around the 30-second mark, and it's really not clear why police—both Columbus PD and campus cops—felt the need to violently break up this crowd, whose only crime, according to the was failing to stay on the sidewalks, against police orders.

There was isolated trouble elsewhere on campus. Scanners carried more than 40 reports of fires, mostly in dumpsters, but with at least three couches set ablaze. NBC News reports that about 8,000 student broke into the stadium and tore down a goalpost. And the requisite firing your gun into the air celebrations:

There also were reports of gunshots fired in the campus area right after the game, Columbus police dispatchers reported. There were no reports of gunshot injuries related to postgame celebrations.

Police said they made a "handful" of arrests.

But the main crowd, outside of the Ohio Union, was relatively peaceful, if uncooperative. Here's what they got for their jubilation:

And, from earlier in the night, a couple of particularly striking scenes of the of celebration:

All photos from the AP.