Alabama shouldn’t worry about fans storming fields after beating the Tide ... it should worry when they don’t

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — The trickle of fans over the low brick walls of Neyland Stadium started slow on Saturday night. Yes, Tennessee had beaten its hated foe Alabama, the cigar smoke was rising, and “Rocky Top” filled the air. It was a cause for celebration, sure, but field-storming? The uncertainty in the crowd was palpable. Didn’t we just do this two years ago? Should we…?

And then the mob mentality took over, and all reason flew away into the Knoxville sky. The Vol faithful swarmed the field, pulling down the goalposts (again) and tearing up chunks of checkerboard turf (again). The Tennessee powers-that-be weren’t pleased; the turf had just been laid down a couple weeks ago after a Morgan Wallen concert, and police wouldn’t let either goalpost leave the stadium this year for a tour around Knoxville and a dunk in the river. Old-school Vols groused quietly that this was silly; beating Alabama after a 15-year losing streak is one thing, but storming a field after beating them for the second time in three years is embarrassing.

For the second time this season — and the second time in Tennessee, incidentally — Alabama’s players had to wend their way through a tide (sorry, Bama) of onrushing fans storming the field. (At least this time no Alabama players shoved any opposing fans, though they surely would have loved to release some frustration somehow.)

Vanderbilt and Tennessee followed in the field-storming path of LSU in 2022, Texas A&M in 2021, Ole Miss in 2014 and Auburn on three separate recent occasions — moments when the euphoria of bringing down big, bad Alabama culminated in a glorious, communal stomp on the grass where it happened. It’s an understandable impulse, particularly in the cases of Vandy this season, Tennessee in 2022 or Auburn in 2013, the Kick Six year. Sometimes, you can’t just celebrate in your seat, you gotta jump around and get crazy on the turf.

The reason why these kinds of field stormings happen against Alabama and not against, say, Kentucky is obvious. Alabama has spent a decade and a half as the Evil Empire, the final boss, the standard-bearer for excellence in college football. A win is a win, but a win over Alabama is a statement.

As Bama247’s Mike Rodak noted on Saturday night, every program that’s beaten Alabama at home has stormed the field, dating all the way back to LSU in 2010:

All those field-stormings have come at a cost, and not just for replacement turf and goalposts. The SEC fines schools that storm the field or court, and fines are getting heftier by the year. A compilation of SEC fines by AL.com shows that Auburn has been fined three times for a total of $505,000, LSU once for $250,000, Ole Miss once for $50,000, Tennessee twice for $200,000, Texas A&M once for $100,000, and Vanderbilt once for $100,000. In other words, Alabama losses have resulted in total fines of more than $1.2 million.

Alabama is one of three legacy SEC schools, along with Mississippi State and Georgia, never to have paid conference fines for storming the field. (Texas and Oklahoma haven’t either, but then they just joined the conference.) Mississippi State — well, sorry, but you’ve got to have a statement win to warrant storming the field. Georgia and Alabama tend to believe themselves above such pedestrian displays of emotion.

Alabama fans sniff that they’ve never stormed Bryant-Denny Stadium after a victory. (That may or may not be true, but they definitely stormed Legion Field in Birmingham back when the Tide played there.) After a defeat, Alabama fans tend to find solace in history and in memes, like a riff on the Street Fighter line about how an opponent should celebrate when they beat Alabama, but when Alabama beats that opponent, it’s just another Saturday.

Thing is, for Alabama, these celebrations are starting to come uncomfortably close to one another. The last time Alabama was 5-2 after seven weeks in the season was in 2007, the first year of Nick Saban’s reign. The Tide finished that season with a 7-6 on-field record — four of those wins were later vacated — but with a four-game losing streak tucked in there.

This Alabama team — which is at the moment a sloppy, undisciplined, inaccurate mess — is only a couple plays removed from a four-game losing streak. And with five games left in the season, some ugly marks are still on the table. Alabama hasn’t lost three games in a season since 2010, and all three of those losses — including the infamous 28-27 Iron Bowl comeback engineered by Cam Newton — were to top-20 teams.

Still ahead: a home battle this weekend against No. 21 Missouri, and then road games against No. 8 LSU and Oklahoma. Sooner fans might well storm the field if they win; there isn’t much worth celebrating in Norman these days. But if LSU stays in the top 10, and then wins on Nov. 9, that’s when it gets really interesting to see if Tiger fans storm the field.

Because as bad as it is for the Crimson Tide to see fans storming the field around them, it’s so much worse if they stay in the stands, celebrating a win over Alabama like it’s just any another victory.