Arkansas and Vanderbilt earned two stirring wins against top-five teams on Saturday, and one day later the Southeastern Conference ordered them to pay for the celebration.
Vanderbilt, whose fans stormed the field after a 40-35 upset of then-No. 1 Alabama, is being fined $100,000 for its first violation of the SEC’s enhanced penalties for field storming.
Vanderbilt fans not only stormed the field but removed the goalposts and carried them to downtown Nashville.
Arkansas, meanwhile, will owe more because it incurred its second violation under the new rules. The first was when its fans stormed the court following the men’s basketball team’s win over Duke on Nov. 29, 2023, which incurred the $100,000 fine. The second was on Saturday night when Razorbacks fans stormed the field following the 19-14 upset of then-No. 4 Tennessee.
The fines will be paid to Alabama and Tennessee, respectively, a new wrinkle in the penalties adopted at the league’s spring meetings in 2023. Previously, schools were penalized $50,000 for a first offense, $100,000 for a second offense and $250,000 for a third offense. Now, if Arkansas were to commit a third offense, it would owe the school it beat $500,000.
Following the stiffening of the league’s penalties, each conference member was required to submit a court or field management plan to the conference and a communication plan that discourages fans from entering the playing surface and lays out the penalties for doing so. If a school doesn’t incur a penalty for four years, its clock for field storming fines is reset.
“While fines don’t impact the immediate decision-making process of fans, they do provide an incentive from universities to develop strategies,” Sankey said in June 2023.
If all visiting team personnel and game officials are off the playing surface before fans enter the field, no penalty from the conference will be assessed.
The new SEC guidelines were supposed to make the schools care more about preventing postgame celebrations from spilling onto the playing surface, but so far they don’t appear to be working. A group of SEC officials and athletic directors, worried about safety, considered harsher measures, including team suspensions or even forfeits, but elected to just ramp up the fine structure.
But SEC athletic departments clear millions in revenue each year, and the visual of field-storming offers good publicity.
Arkansas coach Sam Pittman alluded to the coming fine while being interviewed on ESPN amid the sea of fans.
“The AD’s going to be mad, or maybe he won’t be,” Pittman told ESPN. “I don’t know, right now I don’t care.”
(Photo: Denny Simmons / The Tennessean / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)
