Markel to students: ‘No more storming the court’

Remember last year when OSU fans got torched for rushing the court against an unranked OU team it was favored by 9.5 points over?

I do.

Earlier this week Markel Brown said that doesn’t need to happen anymore.

“There’s no more storming the court anymore. It’s expected of us to win. To win a lot of games. And being ranked so high comes with that. Storming the court is fun and all, but now we’re capable of winning big games and that’s what we should go out and do.”

I agree, with a caveat or two. To me there are only three acceptable instances in which students should be allowed to rush the court.

1. Your team is unranked and beats a top 10 team — Perfect example was the Mizzou game in 2012. I’ll be liberal with this as well. If KU comes in 22-6 and is ranked 13th in the country and OSU is 5-20 and wins, that’s grounds for a court storming.[1. And a coach firing.]

But if you’re ranked, heck, if you’re receiving votes, you should never rush the court against another ranked team, much less an unranked team. That’s like Justin Timberlake swiping Jessica Biel from this dude (who she was dating before her and Timberlake got married) and bragging on Twitter about it.

2. An Instant Classic against a team with a future NBA hall-of-famer — You can throw the rankings out the window. If #GallagherIba is trending on Twitter because everyone in the continental United States is multiple OTs deep into a classic at GIA, you can rush, stomp on, kiss, lay on, do snow angels on, take photos with your friends on, and steal Kevin Durant’s Gatorade towel on the court. I’m also fine with Instant Classics in general (see: 2008, A&M and Baylor)

3. Your team clinches the conference crown — Again, this is way different than just squeaking past an unranked OU team at home. Watch this video of OSU solidifying its ’04 title. If you can listen to a packed-out GIA chant “Big 12 champs” and not get chills, you should probably not be a reader of this blog.[1. And my gosh, I miss that team.]

That year’s crowd didn’t rush the court but I would have been fine with it. And you better believe if OSU wraps this thing up on March 1 against KU at home in the third-to-last Big 12 game of the year with 13,611 chanting “streak is oh-ver, streak is oh-ver” you need to be on that court .0001 seconds after the buzzer sounds, I don’t care if we’re ranked No. 1.

That’s it. Those are the only three situations in which a court storming is acceptable.

And I get it, I get why it happened last season — everybody was just so drunk on bourbon the fact that GIA was full and we were actually good and I actually kind of bought at the time because of how much fun it was. But I hope the only reason we see any 20-year-olds without team-issued warmups on the GIA floor this year is reason No. 3.