As you've surely already heard a few too many times, the college basketball tradition of court storming is back at the forefront of the national conversation again this week, as it seems to be a couple of times every season.

Never quite like this before, though, right?

This one feels different, with Kyle Filipowski—an arguably first-team All-American from Duke of all teams—suffering a minor knee injury from what sure looked like a couple of premeditated collisions on the part of raucous, almost certainly inebriated Wake Forest fans.

At long last, this incident feels like the catalyst for a major change to—or perhaps the complete elimination of—one of the dumbest things that we have allowed to happen for far too long.

Predictably, the discourse in the aftermath of the controversial court storm in Winston-Salem was mind-numbingly asinine, as it was when Caitlin Clark collided with a court-storming fan at Ohio State a month ago.

Putting the blame on security not being adequately prepared/staffed?

Seriously?

You want an entire arsenal of riot-shield wielding SWAT teams surrounding the baselines at the end of every game where the fans might want to rush the court if the home team wins?

Or how about the arguments that this wouldn't have happened if Duke head coach Jon Scheyer had pulled his starters with 1.2 seconds remaining in a four-point game?

I'm sorry, is your stance that it wouldn't have been a problem if it were Sean Stewart or TJ Power getting trampled instead of Filipowski?

Worst of all, though, were the people trying to Zapruder film their way into putting the blame on the player.

As many did with Clark's collision, too, some rushed to splice together frame-for-frame shots from different camera angles to argue that Filipowski was the one initiating the initial contact, as though the block/charge debate makes a damn bit of difference when talking about a dejected player's safety fresh off a tough loss, trying to avoid a Pamplona-esque mob of crazed fans.

Was the way that Flip stepped with his right leg just before the first collision a perfectly natural walking motion?

I don't know. Maybe?

How about you go exercise at a high intensity level for over two hours, get some disappointing news and try to then immediately walk through a mosh pit and we'll judge how natural your gait looks?

What most definitely was not a normal ambulatory motion was the second fan shoving Filipowski in the back while running past him—just like it was not normal when Memphis' David Jones was patted on the back several times by a shirtless, court-storming Tulane fan back on Jan. 21.

That Tulane incident occurred just hours after the Clark collision, after which I tweeted, "And this was just inadvertent. It's a miracle we've made it this long into court storms without an intentional hit."

Well, it's no longer a miraculous drought.

Intentional contact with visiting players has now happened several times.

And I don't feel it's an exaggeration in the slightest to suggest that if we don't do something to nip this in the bud immediately—if we continue allowing fans to not only go onto the court but actually make contact with opposing players—we are intentionally leaving the door wide open for a "Malice in the Palace" type of catastrophe.

Even if it's not a case where a fan maliciously attacks a player, what if Jones had turned around and knocked that knucklehead from Tulane out cold?

What if instead of rushing to Filipowski's aid, the Blue Devils had rushed to his defense and started fighting back against the Wake Forest students?

Is that what it's going to take for this nonsense to end?

A full-blown brawl like the one that broke out in the Texas A&M-Commerce vs. Incarnate Word handshake line last week? (Another tradition that we should probably abolish, but let's save that for another day.)

I may come off as an old man yelling at clouds here, but I promise I don't hate fun or celebrations.

This is simply a risk/reward situation in which it would be fantastic if we could eliminate the risk while still maintaining some form of the reward.

The on-campus environments are a gigantic part of what make regular-season college basketball so doggone entertaining, and if we could normalize a postgame tradition of players running up into the student section to celebrate after a marquee win, I'm all for it.

At that point, we're talking about a situation on par with the lead singer of a band doing a little crowd surfing at a concert, as opposed to the current state of affairs which is more like a Battle of the Bands competition in which the losing musicians are occasionally left to fend for themselves in a sea of the other band's intoxicated groupies.

If you adamantly insist on letting fans onto the floor after an emotional home win, we must at least mandate some sort of delay so the opposing team can get safely out of harm's way.

Clark was chastised for running into a fan instead of taking her time walking off the court. Filipowski was criticized for taking his time and not sprinting to safety as soon as possible. But the real problem is that the players are getting surrounded before they can even process the situation.

When the final buzzer sounds, throw a 15 or a 30 back up on the shot clock and let the anticipation mount as the fans prepare for the mad rush, loudly counting down until the party can begin.

But situations like Saturday when Wake Forest fans were literally on the court before time had even expired?

That cannot be allowed to happen anymore.

Perhaps the simplest way to fix it is by enforcing a rule that the home team loses by forfeit if a court storm happens before the visiting team has had time to leave the floor.

There are already rules in place that a game can be forfeited if fans throw things onto the court, so why should a mob of fans throwing itself onto the court be any different?

Would that completely solve the problem?

Well, no, probably not. If 8-19 Michigan had upset Purdue this past Sunday, would turning the win into a 2-0 loss in the record books dissuade them from wanting to rush the court at the end of an extremely frustrating season?

Moreover, how in the world would we factor that into Purdue's resume for bracketology purposes? Try to technically call it a win and grade it in the metrics as a two-point win, even though we would all know it was a loss?

Threatening the fans with nullification of the win would have at least prevented the Wake Forest situation from happening, though, since the fans knew full well they probably needed that win to make the NCAA tournament. That type of punishment would prevent maybe more than half of the court storms around the country, and would at least give the schools more of an incentive to actually do something to prevent court storms from happening.

It might not be perfect, but it's at least a start.

It'd be a whole heck of a lot better than doing nothing, or, worse, going with Jay Bilas' completely outrageous suggestion of trying to arrest everyone.

But whatever we decide to do, could we at least get uniformity around the country on what is clearly a national issue?

Hours after FilipowskiGate began, ESPN shared a graphic about court storming fines by conference, noting that there is currently no penalty in the ACC, no penalty until the third time it happens in the Big Ten, a $5,000 fine in the Big East, a $25,000 fine in the Big 12, an escalating fine in the Pac-12 that begins at $25,000 and an escalating fine in the SEC that begins at $100,000.

And while $100,000 is more of a deterrent than absolutely nothing, it still didn't stop LSU fans from running amok after its buzzer-beating win over Kentucky last Wednesday. (Nor should it have stopped them. They're not the ones paying the fine; at least not directly.)

TL;DR: We need stricter rules around court storms before something truly reprehensible happens.