Duke star Kyle Filipowski’s injury, sustained when Wake Forest fans stormed the court after their victory last weekend, has reignited the debate over the safety of court-storming in college basketball.
However, Mike Golic Jr. offered a solution on Tuesday that may be crazy enough to work.
The current concern surrounding court-storming stems from the lack of time provided for the visiting team to safely exit the court before fans rush in. This creates a potentially dangerous situation where players and coaches, like Filipowski, have limited space and minimal protection from potential accidents.
But what if we could find a way to delay fans briefly from storming the court until the entirety of the opposing team is in the respective locker room?
That may be easier said than done. But Golic presented a pitch on how free promotional giveaways from home teams could be enough to entice fans from waiting until the time is right to storm the court in the future.
“Jay Bilas is talking about deterrence to keep students from rushing the court,” said Golic on the Gojo and Golic Show. I’m talking about a reward right here. I’ve got the solution because I know what college kids like, and I know what crowds in general at sporting events like. Free stuff, baby. So, walk with me on this. What local brand will step up to the plate and do what we see for free throws all the time? ‘Hey, so and so on the opposing team misses two free throws, everybody gets free chicken sandwiches from Chick-fil-A.’ Or whatever the place is around campus, that is right there.”
“You get the opposing team successfully off the court before you storm that thing? Everybody in the crowd is getting free Taco Bell or whatever you,” Golic continued. “You’ve got to speak the love language of drunk college people. And the love language of drunk college people is free food. What will get students to self-police each other? The prospect of free drunk food on the back side of this celebration. This is how we fix the court storming controversy.”
how do you get the opposing team off the court safely before storming? Two words:
Free Food. pic.twitter.com/aZbUBr0NsO
— Mike Golic Jr (@mikegolicjr) February 27, 2024
In theory, this is a pretty genius solution from Golic for teams to use in situations where there could be an upset looming. Free food could help entice fans to wait until visiting teams are off the floor to rush the court.
That being said, something like this would be pretty much impossible to enforce on a national level. All these college teams have different companies they are sponsored by, and each would need to work out a deal to provide all this free food to the fans.
Also, court-storming situations aren’t all that predictable for teams to see coming. Upsets are upsets because they are usually unexpected most of the time.
To fully protect players and coaches, teams must provide this deal for every game, which is impractical.
Although Golic’s solution is attractive, it’s unlikely to fix this contentious issue permanently.
