Throughout his three-decade career as a renowned ESPN play-by-play broadcaster, Dave Pasch says he was on the microphone for two college basketball games that ended in a court-storming. One occurred earlier this month as unranked LSU upset Kentucky as time expired at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center in Baton Rouge, La. Pasch recalled this week a conversation he and analyst Jay Williams had with an LSU athletics department staffer before the game.
“We asked, if they beat Kentucky, are they going to storm the court?” Pasch said. “He was like, ‘Nope, we’re not falling on the court here. We’ve beaten Kentucky before.’ Well, they won on this crazy, last-second shot and, of course, they fell to the floor.
In final sequence of the game, you can clearly hear Williams say, “Didn’t we talk today about whether LSU has proper protocol for a storm on the court?” as ESPN cameras flashed wide shots of LSU fans streaming onto the court.
The issue of court-storming became national this week after Wake Forest fans ran onto the floor of Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum following Saturday’s win over Duke. Cameras captured video of several fans engaging Duke star Kyle Filipowski, who ended up limping off the court, prompting Duke coach Jon Scheyer, who fumed in a postgame press conference, to ask, “When are we going to ban court-storming?” Last month, Iowa star Caitlin Clark collided with an Ohio State fan after the Buckeyes upset the Hawkeyes in Columbus, Ohio.
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ESPN producer Eric Mosley and director Mike Roig estimate they’ve worked 16 to 18 college games where fans of one team storm a court. Some of those storms on the court occurred when a team had a home upset of perennial heavyweights Duke, Kansas or Kentucky. Roig coached Arkansas’ 80-75 win over Duke on Nov. 29, and you will see the wide shot cut out by Roig as fans flocked to the Bud Walton Arena Floor.
Mosley said production planning for court-storming happens before tip time. ESPN production crews pre-scouted where they could find a safe place for their reporter and camera operators to interview a winning coach and player. Directors such as Roig meet hours before games with camera operators to discuss protocol and various scenarios including storming a court. The camera setup is such that viewers can gain access to multiple entry points. For a regular season college basketball game, there are typically five non-manned hard and robotic cameras. Those are located in positions that are safe from the crowd. Then there are three hand-held cameras manned by operators on the baselines and center court. (The overhead camera for Wake Forest-Duke got the best shot of what happened to Filipowski.)
“One of the first questions we ask when we get on site with the (sports information director) for certain games is if there’s an appetite for court invasion or if security allows for that,” Mosley said. “Let’s find out where the student section is and what the security situation is there. We ask where can we get our cameras and reporters to meet a coach and star player for that postgame interview? We’re trying to get ahead of those things as soon as possible because we don’t want to be caught in a position where our folks like Holly Rowe, Jess Sims, Kris Budden and our camera mates aren’t safe. I don’t want them to be trapped and stepped on. For the most part, we have been successful.”
The play-by-play broadcaster for the Duke-Arkansas game was Dan Shulman, who estimated he called 20 to 25 court-storming games during his career as an ESPN broadcaster. (Shulman is also the TV voice of the Toronto Blue Jays.)
“No matter how much fun they have on TV, I’m always worried about what might happen,” Shulman said. “I remember a court-storming at a Louisville-Charlotte game that I was doing, and Doris Burke, who was the sideline reporter at the game, was trying to get an interview with the Charlotte coach, and I was worried for his safety. It was complete chaos in the court.
“Whenever there is a court-storming, it is difficult for us at our table to really see a lot of what is happening. All we really see are the people closest to our table. Sometimes the student section can be behind our broadcast location, so knowing they’re going to our court is obviously a bit confusing when you’re trying to navigate a broadcast. I think for the most part, television people hope that when they happen, everyone is happy, and no one gets hurt. There is no question that this is a great visual on TV, enjoyed by many viewers. But for me, the risk is greater than the reward.
Wake Forest fans took over their home court after Saturday’s win. An injury to Duke’s Kyle Filipowski has reignited the discussion about court-storming. (Grant Halverson/NCAA Photos via Getty Images)
Bob Fishman agrees with Shulman. Fishman retired from CBS Sports last year after 50 years of work between CBS News and CBS Sports and directed 39 NCAA men’s Final Fours, including Michael Jordan’s title-winning shot in the 1982 title game and the upset of North Carolina State in Houston the following year. Fishman said he’s been thinking a lot lately about court-storming and that he would never tell a camera operator to run onto the court while one, making sure they have a position under the basket and shooting what they can.
“I’m pretty firm on what I think should be done — you can’t ignore it,” Fishman said. “It’s not like a streaker running all over the field in a football game, which you don’t show. I think that you have to show it because it’s part of the story and especially now that there are players who are injured. How I do it is throw in a wide shot of some kind, maybe from a backboard camera or from a high beauty camera we call it. Then I make sure my cameras on the court are recording everything and those things are fed into a tape machine. I’m not going to put that on the air. But I think you have to show something, which in my mind (is) a high shot.
Broadcasters and production crews, especially at a 24/7 news outlet like ESPN, have to follow the story to its conclusion, whether they’re live on the air or not.
“We have to remember that documentation goes on even when we’re not on the air,” Mosley said. “We have to treat this as news. For example, some of the Filipowski stuff happened after the crew signed off and the network moved on to another game. We were taught and told over and over that we had to hang in there and document as much as we could. That’s because someone will be looking for that thing.”
Mosley and Roig said they often wondered how to navigate documenting court-storming without glorifying the action.
“It’s a difficult question to answer,” said Roig. “You’re both documenting and somewhat glamorizing it at the same time. As a director, you follow that line. We’re always taught as directors when someone goes on the court or on the field, you don’t show them. Because more people will do it if you show them. It expanded and moved away. But it’s a little weird animal, right? We are talking about hundreds and hundreds of people who come to court. … You blur the line of documentation or you glorify it. You have to have the mindset that you’re documenting it, but at the same time, you have to be careful how you document it.”
In a segment on ESPN’s “First Take” on Monday, longtime ESPN college basketball commentator Jay Bilas was critical of sports broadcasters who glamorize court-storming.
“Years ago when fans would run out of the field or court during a game, it was the network’s policy not to show that because we didn’t want to encourage it,” Bilas said. “So what does that say about the way we use these images in the media today? We can’t deny that we encourage it. Or at least tacitly approve of it. Everyone should take some responsibility for it. I think It’s not the right thing to allow this, but I know it will continue.”
Said Roig: “It’s really a touchy point because as directors, the scene is beautiful, isn’t it? You want to show that. But I’ve never had one before seeing one last week (with Wake Forest-Duke) where it got to the point where it wasn’t fun.”
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(Top photo of the scene after Saturday’s Duke-Wake Forest game: Cory Knowlton / USA Today)
