Pitch Invasion - American Sports

American Sports

"Field rush" redirects here. For the plant, see Juncus tenuis.

In the United States, a pitch invasion is known as "storming or rushing the field."

This is especially common in college football and/or high school football when a team pulls off a major upset, defeats a major rival or notches a history-making win. Many schools employ riot police to physically prevent fans from rushing the field, a controversy in and of itself. However, with the widespread advent of artificial turf such as FieldTurf, some schools are becoming more lax about students invading the pitch. In the last few years, goal posts are also taken down within moments of the end of the game as a cautionary measure to prevent fans from climbing atop them to cause damage to the standard holding them up, damage to television camera equipment on the posts, and spectator injury.

In modern baseball, a pitch invasion is typically undertaken by one or a small number of attention seeking fans or pranksters, rather than a large number of people. Almost universally, the perpetrator(s) will be ejected and banned for life from the ballpark, and may also face criminal charges depending on the nature of the offense.

In cases when a game is broadcast on television and a person or small group runs onto the field, the broadcaster will cut to another camera shot elsewhere in the stadium, to the announcers in the press box, or to a commercial break instead of focusing on the person(s); this is to avoid to giving attention to their behavior, and to discourage imitators who might try the same thing.

College basketball has a similar phenomenon, known as "storming the court". This normally happens for the same reasons as storming the field in college football, and is somewhat de rigueur on the lower levels of the sport, as in some gyms, the only way to exit from the stands is to go on or near the court.

However, more recently, some conferences have begun cracking down on pitch invasions in all sports.