It’s not hard to get hurt playing big time college basketball. There’s on-court collisions, you can get hit, you might trip on something. And that’s just after the game ends. That is, if your game ends with court storming, when fans rush from the stands to the floor after a huge home win. This happens the most after a big upset of a highly ranked team. Like when Wake Forrest upset Duke last weekend, or when UCF surprised Kansas earlier this year. Increasingly, there’s a sense that if you’re a college student and your team is about to pull off a huge, unexpected home win over a Goliath, then it’s nearly a right if not obligation to join the celebration immediately thereafter.
That right may soon go the way of smoking on an airplane as college coaches and ADs and conference commissioners are taking a hard look at banning the practice, a movement pushed by a couple of high profile and nearly disastrous storms this season. One happened when an Ohio State fan violently collided with Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, perhaps the most accomplished player in women’s college basketball history, who was simply trying to run off the court after the game. And Duke’s Kyle Filipowski, a likely lottery pick in next year’s NBA draft, had to be carried off when Wake Forrest fans knocked into him and hurt his knee. In both cases, the athletes were able to shake it off, but it doesn’t take much to realize it could very easily have been much worse.
Because of that, there’s quick momentum to make some strict rules keeping fans in the stands, even after upsetting Kentucky. At the moment, a bunch of Division I conferences have some restrictions around courts storming, primarily focused on having a plan to safely get the visiting team off the court. Violations come with fines of a wide variation, from a $3000 fine for a first offense in the Big South to a half a million for a third offense in the SEC. It hasn’t seemed to move the needle much, especially because Missouri would be more than willing to spend a couple hundred thousand for a season defining win over, say, Alabama. And perhaps more to the point, especially when universities fight the daily battle over student disengagement and declining enrollment, seeing hundreds of students celebrate their school in unison on national television is a fairly welcomed sight. So as much as universities know something has to give, a rabid student section will be a hard habit to quit.
Of course, we don’t see this in the NBA or other professional sports. In fact, if you put a foot on an NBA court while players are still on it and you’re not a coach or an official, expect to be blindsided by the police before you get in bounds. Same goes for the NFL, baseball, tennis, and so on. The rationale is that it’s an issue of player safety, and, of course, that players and their union would never stand for it. Of course, therein lies one of the biggest difference with college athletics. Though perhaps one that’s changing quickly. Meaning, if players can truly unionize and are employees, perhaps this tradition might be eliminated by negotiation as much as by force.
Still it’s disingenuous to not recognize that part of the original allure of college court storming wasn’t simply to get rowdy and irresponsible. At some level, this was a chance for college students to celebrate on their court with their classmates – namely, the ones who actually play on the basketball team. That was at least a part of the ritual, one that stands quite apart from any connection between pro and fan. Perhaps the increased separation of top college athletes from the rest of the student body has changed that. And maybe the influence of social media has turned up the volatility and ego of court storms, a performative act to exceed prior iterations with little or no regard for the visitors in harm’s way. Or perhaps I’m simply romanticizing the past, one where a bunch of Minnesota undergrads ended up in the hospital after trying to rush onto their football field after beating Michigan. Maybe it was never okay, and this is just another reminder.
Will the rules change. I have a feeling they probably will this time. Which hopefully means college basketball players will only get hurt when the game is still going.
Keith Strudler is the director of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. You can follow him at @KeithStrudler
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