College Athletics: The Future of Storming the Field

Recent incidents with Duke basketball, as well as Iowa basketball start Caitlin Clark have heightened safety alarms amongst the college sports landscape bringing into question whether or not fans should be allowed to keep storming the playing surface to celebrate a win.

Alabama v LSU / Jonathan Bachman/GettyImages

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Kyle Filipowski

The Wake Forest Demon Deacons basketball team upset the Duke Blue Devils and stormed the court as seen on CBS Writer Kyle Boone’s X (formerly known as Twitter) account which was in front of a record crowd in Winston Salem. During the celebration, Duke forward Kyle Filipowski appears to be mauled by the rush of fans suffering a knee injury.

ESPN just showed a new angle of the court-storming at Wake Forest where Duke's Kyle Filipowski was injured. Can clearly see where he hurts his knee as a fan taunts him while racing to midcourt. Unbelievable. pic.twitter.com/ABAsKC2kTI
— Kyle Boone (@kyletheboone) February 24, 2024

While the collision looked incidental, this is just another example of player and fan safety coming into play.

Between the revenue that college sports generate, the newly introduced NIL and safety concerns for all parties involved, it should not shock anyone if these recent incidents with more popular teams and players shed even more of a light on this issue than ever before. And unfortunately but understandably so, one of college sports’ long-standing traditions may soon be gone for good.

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