In a scuffle near the end of Sunday’s Southeastern Conference women’s basketball championship in Greenville, South Carolina, Kamilla Cardoso, South Carolina’s 6-foot-7-inch center, pushed down Flau’jae Johnson, LSU’s 5-foot-10-inch guard. That prompted 24-year-old Trayron Milton, Johnson’s brother, to jump over the scorer’s table and onto the court, where he briefly made contact with Cardoso.
Milton seemed to size up the much taller Cardoso, realize he had made a terrible mistake and backed off. But what if he hadn’t?
Milton seemed to size up the much taller Cardoso, realize he had made a terrible mistake and backed off. But what if he hadn’t? Officials say Milton pushed down an SEC employee and stepped on that person’s shoulders to make it to the court. Greenville police booked Milton with assault and battery and disorderly conduct, two misdemeanors. He was released from jail Monday after posting bail. Police say two other people made it out of the stands and to the scorer’s table, but were prevented from running onto the floor.
It may sound alarmist, but it would also be naïve for us to not think about former tennis great Monica Seles, whose career was derailed in 1993 when a fan in Hamburg, Germany stabbed her in the back as she set in the changeover chair between games. When someone who shouldn’t be there runs onto a court, there’s no way of knowing who has ill intentions.
The same goes for jubilant fans who storm the court after a big, sometimes unexpected, victory. Both situations put players at risk.
This season alone, we have seen fans rushing the court result in a near injury for Iowa’s Caitlin Clark — the most watched and most valuable player in all of college basketball — and in a knee injury for Duke center Kyle Filipowski, after Wake Forest fans stormed the court following their upset victory over the Blue Devils. But that’s child’s play compared to what could happen: a severe injury, an assault or an accident that ends someone’s season. While court storming is often dismissed as happy-go-lucky hijinks or kids being kids, when 15,000 people rush a 94-by-50-foot court, something bad happening is inevitable.
Though this season has provided new reasons for us to be concerned about security and player safety, there are stories of fans storming the court that date back over 60 years. But the phenomenon, now fueled by social media as fans want their antics up on Instagram as soon as possible, has become de rigueur — almost a rite of passage — in a way it never has before.
This season alone, we have seen fans rushing the court result in a near injury for Iowa’s Caitlin Clark — the most watched, most valuable player in all of college basketball — and in a knee injury for Duke center Kyle Filipowski.
Court storming is supposed to happen after the home team either upsets a higher-ranked opponent or defeats a rival. But with so much parity in men’s and women’s college hoops, such upsets are far more frequent. Fans therefore show up not only hoping against hope that their team will win but also already ready to storm the court if they do.
The dangers of court storming have some leading voices in college hoops proposing radical, even carceral, solutions: ESPN’s Jay Bilas, one of the most influential voices in these spaces, said on one of that network's shows last month that he wants court stormers to receive citations or be subject to arrest. “Just say, ‘You’re all detained,’ and give them all citations, or arrest them if you want to. And then court stormings will stop the next day.”
The problem with this idea is that the sheer tonnage of law enforcement it would take to accomplish this would turn every college stadium into an internment camp of arrests and detention. More police and surveillance seem to be our solution for everything in the United States. Just ask people on the New York City subways.
Take former New York Police Department Chief Terence “Terry” Monahan, who helped craft the anti-storming policies at Yankee Stadium. Stopping it would be “very easy,” he told NBC News. “You make an announcement, ‘Hey you’re subject to an arrest, and if you’re student, you could be suspended.’ All of a sudden, there’s a consequence going on to the floor. As of now, there is no consequence — no one is saying you can’t do it.”
University of Alabama Athletic Director Greg Byrne has a different approach. After Duke's Filipowski was injured, Byrne told the Birmingham Tip-Off Club, “I think the way it will stop, that will get everybody’s attention to realize this is dangerous is ... the home team forfeits the game.” That would get the attention of many students, but would it actually stop the storming? And if it didn’t, would we really punish players — who may have just won the biggest game of their lives — by telling them that they’d lost? That sounds positively un-American.
There is another suggestion floating in the ether: Host schools — at a great loss of profit and fun — get stripped of a home game if there’s court storming. The question is whether fans who are a couple of beers in would even care.
This answer is feckless. The NCAA needs a uniform policy, and it needed one yesterday.
As for the NCAA, spokesperson David Worlock said to NBC News: “We do not have a policy on storming the court. Policies are implemented and enforced at the conference and institution level. It isn’t allowed during NCAA tournament games, and we work with host venues to develop a security plan to try and prevent it.” This answer is feckless. The NCAA needs a uniform policy, and it needed one yesterday.
The only other solution that wouldn't increase the jail population would be to prohibit fans who storm the court from attending another home game. If not for forever, then at least for that season. To do nothing, which is the NCAA's position, is to invite tragedy. Acting before then would take courage and certainly upset a lot of fans, but it surely beats the alternative.
Players have the right to expect to leave the court without being trampled — and even to engage in pushing and shoving with members of the other team without people from the stands rushing in. It’s a workplace safety issue, and it should be treated as such.
Nobody got hurt during Sunday’s showdown between the Tigers and the Gamecocks. But officials need to be focusing not on what didn’t happen but what could have.