For second time in 3 months, Vanderbilt fined $250,000 for storming court/field; thoughts

[BrentVU]

I have so many thoughts about this.

1. Storming the court/field is a serious issue and the SEC is not wrong to want to prevent it. People have gotten hurt, and others could in the future. The schools, I would think, are liable. And the athletes of the losing school are vulnerable.

2. If Vanderbilt REALLY wanted to stop this, it could. The CSC Event staff positioned itself to prevent a charge by the student section with about a minute left in the game... ten or twelve folks took up positions on the hardwood, trying to look like they would stop anyone who tried to storm the court. Of course, this was at a time when it didn't look like Vandy was going to win the game anyway. And the student section was obviously unintimidated by these folks. When Lawrence's buzzer-beater went in, mayhem erupted, and the CSC folks only made a pretense of trying to stop the 200 or so who penetrated their "barrier."

3. The calculus of the school must be, I can only conclude, it's worth the $250,000 to let the students do this occasionally. Do you really want to rough up some of the exuberant students, most of whom are doing nothing more than celebrating a breathtaking win? The backlash that could come from that could be worse than the damages from letting them celebrate for a few moments.

4. So I have a little sympathy for the CSC Event staff in Memorial Gym-- the dozen or so of them were never going to stop a mad rush of 200 or so students... but I have no sympathy for them after the football win over Florida. It wouldn't have been hard at all to block the staircase that the students used to get to the field; but the CSC folks dropped the ball on that too, costing Vandy a cool $ quarter million.

5. It had been a while since anyone had wanted to storm the field/court at a football/basketball game, so maybe in that regard, Vandy athletics is making progress.

[Seadog73]

Is there a cumulative total of such fines levied by the SEC against Member schools? The conference ranks us in almost every imaginable way - this ranking would be interesting to see.

[AuricGoldfinger]

At a minimum, the AD should have sent CSC the bill for the Florida football game fine. That was easy to have prevented, given that most students had already left campus for Thanksgiving break. At worst, they should have been fired.

[VUDU]

This is the way I look at it. They could hire hundreds of security people for less than $250,000.

[Johnmn555]

Damage to the common areas of the dorm that I lived in freshman year of college ceased when the college threatened to send bills to all residents of the dorm. There's plenty of video. Just announce that students identified on the court or field will each get a bill for $500. End of problem.

All this with a football team that's not bowl eligible and a basketball team that's not going to the NCAAs.