College fans gone wild: are court stormings becoming a dangerous problem?

American students seem to love encountering a mosh pit after big sports victories. What is going on there? It’s a story as old as time in American college sports: field storming (or court storming, in the case of basketball). It’s been happening for decades: the home team wins a game against a highly touted opponent, usually as an underdog, and then thousands of students celebrate by jumping out of their seats and crowding onto the playing field.

Sounds nice. Everyone must love that, right? Not exactly. Lately, a litany of coaches, administrators and media have called for an end to the field storming. Duke men’s basketball coach Jon Scheyer, ESPN’s top analyst Jay Bilas, and some of the most high-profile athletics executives in the country are pushing for the practice’s elimination, with several proposed solutions to get it out of college sports.

Why is there a fuss now? For years, a vocal minority has raised the alarm about the bad things that can happen when rowdy students flood the playing field. Many of them are drunk, and often the opponents have not yet left the field or court by the time the jumped students reach them. But the 2024 season has brought some notable issues between visiting players and fans who have invaded their workspace. Iowa star Caitlin Clark, the most electric player in college basketball, went down in a heap after she came into contact with an Ohio State student following a game in January. Clark wasn’t injured, but Duke star Kyle Filipowski may have been when a Wake Forest student ran into him after the Demon Deacons upset the Blue Devils last weekend. (Duke conflicting signals sent about Filipowski’s status and he was back in the lineup Thursday.) And on Tuesday, Texas Tech fans threw bottles on the field during a game against Texas — not a storming of the court, but another notable insistence on a fan-led raid the court on.

So this is just a matter of two unfortunate collisions? Aren’t there a lot of these types of events? There are, but the incidents with Clark and Filipowski did not occur in a vacuum. Last fall, a student from Mississippi ran into a football player from Louisiana State and, not surprisingly, found himself knocked to the ground. A few seasons ago, a football player from Alabama pushed a woman who had joined the crowd on the field after the Crimson Tide lost a game at Tennessee. The widespread cellphone footage of these events has increased their notoriety, with more and more people wondering when something truly grim might happen.

Did something bad happen at this point? satisfying America has not had a disaster on the scale of stadium tragedies in other countries, but a number of people have suffered serious injuries during a storm. In 2004, a high school basketball star suffered a stroke and a ruptured carotid artery when fans ran onto the court after he ended the game with a slam dunk. The incident left him paralyzed on his right side. During the college game, there were several near misses that could have resulted in serious injury to at least one person broke a leg as fans ran onto the field around them.

If this is all public, why do schools even allow lawsuits? Ostensibly, they allow it because no one wants to be the bad cop who extinguishes a beloved tradition. Lots of conferences have nominal fine structures which don’t even seem intended to stop a storming, but to give schools that allow this a slap on the wrist. The Atlantic Coast Conference, which includes Duke and Wake Forest, does not impose a monetary penalty, although that will likely change after the Filipowski incident.

It is clear that half measures do not work. What could limit these situations? Everyone has a different idea. Few would propose confining fans to their sections, which could trap people and contribute to crises like the Hillsborough tragedy. Alabama’s athletic director introduced the home team Take in custody a game where fans storm the field. That would be draconian, of course, but it would stop or drastically reduce the fans rushing across the playing surface. A more moderate idea is to deprive teams of a home game next season. And then there’s the concept of a carrot instead of a stick: offer students free gifts, such as food or merchandiseas long as they can keep themselves off the field.

So college sports decision makers must work together and reach a fair agreement that satisfies everyone. There’s a good chance of that of course. So in the meantime, safety measures will fall to the teams themselves and the individual host locations. When a team like Duke is about to lose a road game, it should take whatever steps it can to even get its players off the field for the final buzzer. Of course, that’s not really a permanent solution. The best hope might be for arenas to have phalanxes of event staff forming a human wall to slow down a storm. Even a delay of a few seconds could reduce the chance of encounters between drunk fans and visiting players. But wherever a group of people run towards each other in an emotional environment, danger will follow.

If storming the courts disappears, will college sports lose a great tradition? Yes. The thrill of celebrating in midfield or midfield after a huge win is one of the defining memories of college for countless students. It helps distinguish college sports from professional games and provides a beautiful view that fills alumni with pride when they see photos from afar.

Does this mean everything is fine? No. On the current trajectory, something very bad will eventually happen. Policy can change now or change then.