Ryan Bautista | News Editor
November 15, 2024
This season, college football has experienced many shocking upsets that no one saw coming, which has caused an uproar among students to celebrate their school making history.
It started early on September 7, when Northern Illinois beat No. 5 Notre Dame 16-14 in the first large upset of the season. Notre Dame plummeted out of the top 25 rankings and has spent the season trying to crawl back up into the public eye.
Next up, the upset that truly rocked the entire college football world: unranked Vanderbilt beat a No. 1 team for the first time when they beat Alabama at home on October 5, also snapping a 23-game losing streak against the Tide. Quarterback Diego Pavia threw for 252 yards with two touchdowns, and the Commodores vanquished Alabama with a score of 40-35. It was so crazy, that the students felt the only way to express their feelings was to rip the goalpost out of the field, carry it across the town, and throw it in the river.
On the same day, Arkansas beat No. 4 Tennessee 19-14 with an impressive showing from quarterback Taylen Green. Unfortunately, students could not take the goalposts out of the ground, so the on-field celebrations were limited to a mosh pit.
Skipping over to this week, No. 16 Ole Miss (which I found out could just be called the University of Mississippi, but they want to be cool) also beat No. 3 Georgia. Students were so excited that they followed Vanderbilt’s example and rushed onto the field. You could barely see the grass since so many students were on the field. Ole Miss players were moshing with the fans, and even the referees were joining in on the fun by blowing their whistles….wait, the refs are blowing their whistles?
It turns out, the game wasn’t over when the students rushed onto the field. There were still 16 seconds left on the clock, and Ole Miss had to kneel the ball one more time. It took a while, but the security guards finally calmed down the students and got them onto the sidelines where they were held behind a rope until quarterback Jaxson Dart kneeled. Then the students stormed the field again.
Students moshing the field after a big win is a traditional celebration, as long as everyone celebrates safely, and no one gets hurt. Senior Ian Moore said how he joined in on a celebration, but he did not mosh the field even though he “wanted to” because it “looked dangerous.” Unfortunately, the celebration resulted in his “phone getting cracked up” due to carelessness during the excitement.
Moshing is also a great visual phenomenon, with so many people having fun celebrating. However, the football league organizations are usually against this form of celebration. If students mob the field, schools can face fines that start at $100,000 and can increase to $500,000 if it keeps happening. The schools also face payment for replacing the goalposts carried out of the stadium, like what happened at Vanderbilt and Ole Miss. While these fines seem like a good idea, they are very ineffective. The thing is, students are not going to care about these fines because the fines do not have that large of an impact on students.
All that to be said, junior Cocean McAlister described how he normally “doesn’t care about college football” but the possibilities of upsets make it “more exciting.” With the football season still going, and more upsets still to come, schools better be prepared to shell out more money when their students celebrate more unheard-of wins.
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