13 injured in Ok. State celebration, two critically

It might be about time to do something about these storming-the-field celebrations. For liability purposes, if no other reason convinces schools to get a handle on it.

It's dangerous. You never see this happen at professional sporting events any more. I remember when I was a kid, the White Sox won the West in 1983, and on the night they clinched it, we stayed in our seats as hundreds or maybe thousands of fans rushed the field. You never, ever see that any more in pro sports. In my opinion, no reason to let it keep going on in college where the participants are less mature and less careful.

http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/7314646/stillwater-postgame-onrush-hurts-13-2-critically-oklahoma-state-cowboys-win

 

I'm sure the athletic department is rushing out a release right now ... asking voters to let OSU into the championship game because of the tragedy they had to endure last night and how it affected them in the second half knowing their fans were going to get hurt.

You are correct, though, those celebrations are insane. Few years back there was a kid in Arizona who had already accepted a scholarship to Stanford -- he was paralyzed during a postgame hoops celebration.

 

In much younger days, I was part of the crowd that stormed the field at Georgia after beating Tennessee in 2000 (which, yeah, was a bit ridiculous). It was not a particularly enjoyable experience. At one point, my shoe came untied, and I didn't dare try to fix it. I ended up with shoelaces that were about three times longer than they were before the game.

It makes for great visuals, but it's extremely dangerous.

 

The last time I saw a pro crowd storm the field was in 1998 when the Cardinals beat the Chargers at Sun Devil Stadium to clinch a 9-7 season and a wild card berth. I still can't believe people actually stormed the field. It was wild.

 

A lot of schools give tacit approval to field-storming, and I imagine there are some situations where it can be harmless. But a huge crowd like at OSU is just a recipe for people getting stomped. And when an enormous metal contraption comes falling to the ground and there is no room to get out of the way...well, injuries are inevitable.

 

Schools should take their damn football money and invest in sets of old-fashioned wood goalposts that could be destroyed by a delirious crowd at less risk to the idiots doing it.

 

The SEC fines schools $50,000 for doing that, so you don't see it all that often anymore. The security is really ramped up at the end of games, and most big stadiums have fences or high hedges/walls between the stands and the field. The only one that seems to ignore it is Kentucky, where fans rushed the field both when the Wildcats beat No. 1 LSU in 2007 and when they beat Tennessee for the first time in 26 years last week.

 

Ya'll destroyed the hedges that night.

 

Yeah, turns out those things are quite tough.

 

I remember the ensuing drama that followed that game. The next televised game kept showing how they were cut down to their base. And yeah, I have a pair of those hedges in my yard. Not only are they tough, they grow like ragweeds.

 

Watch the end of a Clemson game sometime. They have the goalposts on some sort of an automatic setup ... they start coming down the instant the clock reaches zero, and they're flat on the ground in less than a minute (maybe even 30 seconds).

 

I was part of the group that rushed the field when they beat someone (Georgia? Can't remember) they hadn't beaten in a while back during the Mumme years. Well, I didn't really rush. Everyone else went out there, so my friends and I went out on the perimeter, hung out, then said "huh" and headed back to the dorms.

They also started to rush the field, and were climbing the goalposts, when they thought they beat LSU in 2002. Right, J_D?