At ACC Football Kickoff on Tuesday, ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips announced that schools will now be fined if fans storm the court or field after games. The rule mainly applies to football and men's and women's basketball, but this is a very interesting new rule for the conference, as the ACC now joins the SEC in efforts to limit court-storming injuries to both fans and players.
With this new rule, first offenses will be a $50,000 fine, second offenses will be a $100,000 fine, and third offenses will be a $200,000 fine.
“It’s time,” Phillips said Tuesday during ACC Football Kickoff. “We’re seeing more and more of that happen. I’m seeing it more and more. We’re seeing it more and more in basketball. It seems to happen a lot to Duke and North Carolina. We have to protect those student-athletes across all of our 18 programs.”
Phillips directly cited Duke and North Carolina as schools where this instance seems to happen a fair amount, and there's an incident that comes straight to Blue Devil fans' minds as soon as this topic is brought up: Kyle Filipowski.
In February of 2024, when Filipowski was still at Duke, the Blue Devils were upset on the road at Wake Forest. After the buzzer sounded, students stormed the court, and Filipowski subsequently collided with a fan and was seen limping off the court.
He thought the collision was personal.
"It's just really ridiculous how that situation is handled," Filipowski said after the game. "I absolutely feel like it was personal. Intentional for sure. Like I said, there's no reason where they see a big guy like me trying to work my way off the court and they can't just work around me, you know? There's no excuse for that."
Issues like these have become a growing concern around college sports for the last few years, and now the ACC will take action by hopefully limiting the damages. Will court storms and field breaches still happen? Probably. But there are consequences now.
With these new limitations, it will be a bit strange for fans to not be able to rush the court at Cameron Indoor Stadium after a wild victory, or for fans of a smaller school to not be able to storm after a monumental win. However, the safety of the players must come first.