Realization: Bullying the bully?

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I had an incident a couple days ago over a smart-elik comment involving sports. Stupid kid said my team sucked and lost to a rival, when he knew my team whipped their tushie. Following the incident, about 3 older students shoved him and said some choice words to make him sit back down. I politely asked the dude if he wanted me to search the scores, because I'd be more than happy to see what stupid foreign channel he was watching that night. I even told him to pick a search engine so I could prove his smart-elik comment was not needed. He sat back down, and didn't say a word for the rest of the school day. I didn't really take up for myself, because the point is, those 3 other guys were about to knock some realization into his head if he didn't sit down! I feel kind-a upset that he went through that, but he knew what he did was wrong.

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Does anyone feel that I went too harsh, or that those guys were very generous? I'm very mixed into this mess, and I'm not sure how to feel.. Help?

It's okay to be assertive every once in a while, but reconciliation is important. If there's ever an opportunity for you to do a small favor, maybe lending him a pencil or something like that, then do it. You're sending a nonverbal message that you want to make things right. You can also just give him a verbal message, maybe something like "sorry I was obnoxious the other day." Then shake his hand and walk away like it's no big deal. You'd be surprised how well people respond to small polite gestures.

Try to do it when he's not around alot of his friends, because he may be peer pressured to "look cool" and reject your act of reconciliation.

Ha story of my life. Most of the "bullying" incidents I had while growing up was a case of bully's bullying bully's. It was a cycle of it, they'd bully me, I'd bully them. To be honest sometimes I'd start it because I was so desperate for attention I'd take any kind even if it was negative.

You left out something I think is kind of important.

Was this kid from the other school (town whatever)? Were the kids who made him sit back down from your school (town whatever)?

I'm assuming he supported the another team, competing with yours, and the kids who shut him up support yours. If that's the case, this is just another stupid team rivalry thing, and they only supported you out of loyalty to the team. Doesn't sound like typical bullying. Sounds like typical sports rivalry. Just as dumb in my book, but society in general seems to think differently about that sort of thing.

By the way, I'm not a grammar Nazi by any means, but this bugged me for some reason:

It's "smart-aleck," not smart-elik.

Actually, according to MS Word, it's "smart-alack".