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Caitlin Clark has soared to unprecedented heights as the top-scoring player in the history of college basketball. While the Iowa superstar has raised the ceiling for what greatness looks like in the NCAA, she also spent some scary moments on the floor, literally, when an Ohio State fan collided with her while storming the court earlier this season.
This is a problem, and not just because the best player in college basketball was at risk.
Clark had to be helped off the court but avoided injury. The same was not true for Duke basketball player Kyle Filipowski, who was hurt recently when Wake Forest fans stormed the court to celebrate. Filipowski didn’t end up missing any game action, but these incidents are further evidence that it is time to sideline the practice of court storming. The bad behavior and overexuberance of some fans, unfortunately, have shown it is simply not worth the risk.
Court storming, especially after an upset win for the home team, is something of a tradition in college sports — especially basketball. But recent events have rightly forced people to reconsider that tradition.
“When are we going to ban court-storming?” Duke head coach Jon Scheyer said after the incident at Wake Forest. “Like, how many times does a player have to get into something, where they get punched or they get pushed or they get taunted right in their face? It’s a dangerous thing.”
Wake Forest’s head coach shares similar sentiments.
“I don’t like court-stormings — never have. I’ve been a part of those before, as a coach, they just don’t feel safe,” coach Steve Forbes said.
The atmosphere at college sports games can be electric, in large part because of the energy that students and other fans bring to the contests. But player safety needs to come first. That atmosphere can have a heightened sense of excitement without a heightened risk of injury for the people actually playing the game.
As fans seem to increasingly put their own enjoyment ahead of player safety, we can’t help but feel like we do when parents and other fans berate officials. Our message in both cases: This isn’t about you, at least not primarily. Your ticket doesn’t give you a right to be on the court, or any playing surface for that matter, so stop ruining a good thing for everyone else.
While the simplest solution would be for fans to rein in their own behavior, the repeated incidents don’t inspire much confidence that fans will be any less fanatical. So that requires action from the NCAA and individual conferences, which typically set requirements like this for member schools. Some conferences already have fine structures in place for schools when their fans storm the court, but these need to be universal, and they need to be strict.
As others have pointed out, however, even fines have not been enough to dissuade this conduct at some schools. That requires conversations about visiting coaches being able to take their squads off the court before fans rush the court, yes, but it also requires consideration of more outside the box — if heavy-handed — deterrences for fans and schools.
University of Alabama Athletic Director Greg Byrne has offered such an idea: schools whose fans storm the court then forfeit the game.
“You have two kids run out there, no, but when you have a sustained rush like what just happened the other day at Wake, you lose the game. That will get people to stop,” Byrne said recently.
Would this be over the top? Sure. But so is the court storming and fan behavior as of late. Rather than trying to come up with ways to make court storming safer, we think efforts would be simpler and better spent banning the practice entirely. That means clear and strong penalties, and consistent enforcement. Schools, conferences and the NCAA need to send a strong message that student athlete safety is more important than fans trying to blur the line between observer and participant.
