Racially Fueled Fight Leads to Arrest of San Jose SaberCats Coach

Alleged racial epithets led to some punches landed on a 68-year old football coach -- which landed a San Jose Sabercats assistant coach in jail in Florida, according to reports.

The SaberCats -- the Bay Area's indoor Arena Football League team -- had just wrapped up a win over the Jacksonville Sharks when assistant coach Cedric Shawn Walker, 42, reacted to "alleged racial epithets," according to the San Jose Mercury News.

Tim Johnson, 68, the Sharks' assistant general manager, found himself pinned against a wall by Walker "on more than one occasion," reported the Mercury News, which cited reports and interviews produced by the Florida Times-Union.

Walker, who is 6-feet, 245 pounds, may have been one of the San Jose coaches who broke Sharks trainer Josh Gregoire's nose when Gregoire tried to break up the fight, the newspaper reported.

Walker was arrested and charged with battery on a person 65-years-or-older, the newspaper reported. He was released from jail Sunday after he was arrested Saturday.

A statement from the SaberCats calls the incident "unfortunate," and fingered the "verbal altercation" with the "alleged" racially-fueled words as the cause of the fracas.

The slurs were "directed toward members of the SaberCats coaching staff by a front office official of the Sharks," the team said in its statement. "The Jacksonville Police Department is currently investigating the situation and the SaberCats organization will have no further comment at this time."

According to the Jacksonville coach, "San Jose won the game, so I don't know why they had a problem."