Time to End Court Storming

Storming the court has always been considered a rite of passage in college basketball.  Your team pulls off the big upset win over a highly ranked opponent, and you're so overcome with joy and excitement that you just can't contain yourself and have to join in the celebration.  However, storming the court is also incredibly dangerous and, frankly, overplayed.  Which makes me think it might be time for the practice to be completely banned.

There are really only a handful of situations where storming the court is even acceptable.  You win the conference tournament final on your home floor?  Absolutely!  You upset the No. 1 team?  Go ahead!  You beat your archrival for the first time in years?  Sure!  If said rival is 4-18 entering the game?  Definitely not.  You win a random non-conference game on a Tuesday night in December?  No.

Purdue has lost three road games this season.  The opposing fans stormed the court each time.  One of those games was at Nebraska...where they've stormed the court three times this season.  Sorry, but you're Nebraska basketball!  I'll let you have Purdue, but why did you storm the court the other times?  There's no logical explanation that it was warranted three different times in one season!  In fact, that brings me to another rule.  You're only allowed to do it once during the regular season.  You waste it in November, that's your problem.

Of course, there's a reason why courts get stormed so often, and we all know what that reason is.  It's a viral moment.  The video of the court getting stormed always gets shown on SportsCenter and immediately shared online.  Then there's the video that the people doing the storming take themselves, which they post on their own social media pages.  And, in this day and age, getting those social media likes is all that matters to some people.  Which is another part of the safety problem...people who aren't paying attention because they're more preoccupied with storming the court and taking video of themselves doing it.

All of this came to a head on Saturday after Wake Forest beat Duke.  Duke center Kyle Filipowski, a top NBA Draft prospect, had to be helped off the floor after he got run into by a Wake Forest fan during the court storming (which I think started before the clock even hit 0.0).  He escaped serious injury, but the fact that it even happened is unacceptable. 

That's just one example from this season.  The same thing happened when the Ohio State women beat Iowa in January and Caitlin Clark was knocked over by a fan.  Clark, too, was uninjured, but imagine if she was and that's how her pursuit of the all-time scoring record ended?!  And, frankly, it seems like it's only a matter of time until a player, major star or not, IS injured by an opposing fan storming the court.

Some coaches have seen enough.  During the ACC media teleconference on Monday, Duke Head Coach Jon Scheyer (who reported that Filipowski is "sore" but otherwise fine) called for the conference not to wait until the offseason and implement an immediate ban.  Kansas Head Coach Bill Self agrees.  He's seen an official break an arm in a court-storming incident and prepares his team for any potential court-storming situation by making sure they're near the sidelines and able to get out of harm's way quickly.  It shouldn't have to come to that, though.

Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark is on the same page as the coaches.  He plans to speak to the other conference commissioners so that they can address it collectively.  It's not isolated to a single school or a single conference, so they should deal with it together for the sake of the entire sport.  Those conversations will take place.  Whatever type of an agreement is reached, if any, would benefit everyone.

Eleven different conferences--the Atlantic 10, Big East, Big South, Big Ten, Big 12, Conference USA, MEAC, Pac-12, SEC, WAC and WCC--already have a policy in place where the home team is fined under certain circumstances when their fans storm the court.  In the SEC, that goes to the opposing team, so Kentucky has actually collected two different court-storming fines this season.  The ACC, notably, is not among the conferences that has any sort of policy.  As a result, the conference doesn't plan to penalize Wake Forest in any way for Saturday's incident.

While those 11 conferences do have a policy, the others don't.  And those policies differ from conference to conference.  Some have clearly-defined language where it spells out what constitutes a violation and any potential penalties.  Others leave it a little more vague.  So, frankly, a uniform policy across the NCAA would probably be good.  Everything would be the same across the board.  Of course, making sure it's enforced is something else entirely.

Fining schools doesn't really seem like much of a deterrent, either.  Jay Bilas, for one, has been very vocal in his opposition to court storming, and thinks that making the penalty only financial is part of the problem.  His argument is that a school could simply get its boosters together and they'll gladly pay it, which sends a completely contradictory message.  Nany Lieberman, meanwhile, has suggested that maybe fines should increase for each offense, with a potential maximum penalty after it happens a certain number of times.

So, if fines aren't the answer, what is?  Alabama AD Greg Byrne thinks teams should have to forfeit in situations where it gets out of control like on Saturday.  Fans wouldn't be so jubilant when the upset "win" suddenly turns into a loss.  And you know the coaches wouldn't be happy about it.  It's extreme, yes.  But it would also be effective.  That would shut it down real fast.  

Although, ultimately, enforcement is up to the schools.  The conferences can implement all of the policies and issue all the fines they want, but it's the schools that are ultimately responsible for the actual event management.  So, it's on the schools to, at the very least, guarantee the safety of the players, officials and other game day personnel.  Not to mention those in the crowd doing the storming!

Enough people are in agreement that something needs to be done.  Storming the court is part of the thrill of college basketball for students and fans.  But it's also become far too dangerous.  And there have been far to many close calls this season to continue ignoring the problem.