A CROWD QUANDARY
COURT-STORMING CELEBRATIONS GO WAY BACK, AND TRYING TO CURTAIL THEM HAS PROVED DIFFICULT
Recent incidents in college basketball have underscored the potential dangers that come from jubilant fans storming the court after a game. Finding a solution is proving to be a challenge.
Duke center Kyle Filipowski and Iowa star Caitlin Clark got caught in scary incidents recently. An Ohio State fan accidentally knocked Clark down after the Buckeyes beat the visiting Hawkeyes, and last weekend Filipowski got his right knee banged up in a collision with a Wake Forest fan.
Duke coach Jon Scheyer called for immediate measures from the Atlantic Coast Conference to prevent court-storming, but stopping such often-impromptu celebrations is easier said than done, especially with most student sections so close to the court in what pretty much everyone believes is one of the unique and beloved things about the sport.
“You can try to do a zero-tolerance policy, but how [will you] enforce that?” said Brandon Allen, director of research for the National Center for Sports Safety and Security.
Basketball powerhouse Kansas and coach Bill Self have endured court stormings in road losses. Self said he thinks it has gotten better by educating players on how to deal with those situations and getting to the locker room swiftly, but he doesn’t like that they have to.
“I mean, calling a timeout with 15 seconds left and it’s a 10-point game to get guys out of the game, or telling them don’t go out there, stand by the sideline,” he said. “But even with that, that should not be the responsibility of the visiting team to educate their guys. I don’t like it.”
Some leagues have fines in place, and they haven’t stopped anything. Allen doesn’t think they are effective, nor does he like the suggestion from Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne that teams whose fans rush the court forfeit the game. He thinks some schools might have to consider moving student sections farther from the court and pulling season tickets from fans who storm the court.
A simple warning for fans to let visiting teams leave the court before coming down also might help, Allen said.
The Southeastern Conference, in addition to six-figure fines that go directly to the visiting schools, has put in new rules requiring more uniform law-enforcement protection for teams before, during and after games. Not just security guards.
Jeremy Hammond, an assistant commissioner of the SEC, said there has been an added emphasis on protecting visiting teams and giving them a safe path to the locker rooms.
“From a physical-security standpoint, it becomes unsafe to try to stop [fans] if that group decides they’re going to come down,” said Hammond, who headed up a working group that came up with the league’s recent rules updates.
He pointed out that ringing the court with extra security personnel hasn’t really worked.
Storming football fields and basketball courts has become a beloved option for fans over time. The Boston Public Library has a photo of fans going after a goalpost after the 1940 Harvard-Army game.
In basketball, fans rushed the court after the so-called Game of the Century in 1968 when Houston knocked off UCLA at the Astrodome, the first college hoops game televised coast to coast. Notre Dame fans hit the courts after the Fighting Irish ended UCLA’s record 88-game winning streak in 1974.
Kurt Kemper, a history professor at Dakota State who has written books on college football and basketball, said he has found no video evidence of players back then taunting opposing teams.
“The intimacy provided by TV and 24/7 media access, often glorifying devoted hostile student sections, has shifted that dynamic to such an extent that students exhibit little to no sense of transgression,” Kemper wrote in an email, alluding to Duke’s home fans.
Marquette coach Shaka Smart said he doesn’t want schools and leagues to overreact, noting the court-storming celebrations are an aspect of college sports that create memorable scenes. If they can be done safely.
“Whoever is working in game operations, we [must] make sure that the players are safe,” Smart said. “You look at some of the pictures of, like, iconic wins with people hanging off goalposts in football or everybody on the court in basketball, so I wouldn’t say a blanket statement that you’ve got to get rid of it all.”