Kansas-KSU serves as latest reminder that court-stormings need to stop
Perhaps they're fun. But court-stormings are more dangerous than fun. And it's only a matter of time before one leads to a high-profile brawl and/or injury.
By
Gary Parrish
•
3 min read
Midmorning Tuesday, roughly 12 hours after Kansas State's court-storming turned ugly, campus police tweeted a picture of an unruly fan and asked for help identifying him.
So here we are again.
Another day, another national conversation about whether court-stormings should be banned in college basketball, and, for the life of me, I can't even understand the debate. Like, what are we arguing about? More specifically, what's the argument for allowing court-stormings to continue? Is there even one sensible argument in favor of court-stormings?
I asked these questions on Twitter Tuesday because I was genuinely curious.
Am I missing something?
Do I have a blind spot?
Turns out, I'm missing nothing and do not have a blind spot. Dozens of people responded, and literally nobody offered a reason to allow court-stormings to continue that isn't easily trumped by the undeniable risks -- risks on display late Monday in the moments after Kansas State upset Kansas on national television.
Kansas State fans, as expected, rushed the court.
One guy, the idiot campus police tweeted about, intentionally jumped and bumped Kansas forward Jamari Traylor. KU coach Bill Self was pushed up against the scorer's table. A Jayhawks assistant had to pull a Kansas State student away from his players because, it appeared, the Kansas State student was taunting the Kansas players. So on and so forth.
Nobody was hurt.
Nothing too bad happened.
But that has more to do with luck than anything else. And though I've said and written it before, it's worth repeating on a day like today: A court-storming in college basketball that leads to a high-profile brawl is just a matter of time.
There have been issues already.
Serious injuries have been documented.
Somehow, though, the sport has avoided a high-profile court-storming that results in a brawl or major injury. But it's coming. I promise, it's coming. And it could've come Monday night if Jamari Traylor were somebody with a shorter fuse.
Can we be sure other players would respond so civilly?
What if another player gets shoved, then shoves back, then gets pushed by another fan? At what point does a punch get thrown? At what point do lots of punches get thrown? And if we can all agree there's nothing far-fetched about any aspect of this hypothetical, then why can't we all agree it's time to ban court-stormings completely?
Because they're fun! And they're a tradition!
Those are the two responses I got most often from Twitter followers.
To that, I'll say this:
1: Doing anything in life simply because it's a tradition has never made much sense to me. That's an argument typically reserved for people without other good arguments.
2: Court-stormings can be fun, I guess. But when your fun endangers others, it's not the type of fun that should be allowed. This really isn't that complex. Joe Kay is partially paralyzed because of a court-storming. No amount of fun is worth that.
Bottom line, it's past time for decision-makers to stop court-stormings, and don't tell me that's impossible. Because it's not. It's easy. In fact, I'll tell you exactly how to do it. Just announce any student/fan who walks or runs onto the playing surface during or immediately after a game will be expelled/arrested.
Pretty simple, right?
You don't even need extra security.
Just make the penalties clear, then enforce them.
Suddenly, every school will have what amounts to an invisible wall around the court.
Or we can just keep pretending the so-called fun outweighs the undeniable risks and that everything will be fine, but that seems so stupid to most reasonable people. This is a house built on the side of a hill and on a shaky foundation. College basketball can fix it now or wait for the inevitable and then wonder why it didn't fix it before.
Those are the only real options.
And only one of those options makes sense.
