The college basketball world was filled with great stories Saturday night - SMU blasting the No. 7 team in the nation and bringing new meaning to Moody Madness; Texas Tech’s upset of a ranked Oklahoma State team; even Memphis’ 6-1 Joe Jackson blocking a shot by Gonzaga’s 7-1 Przemek Karnowski.
They all vanished to the back pages or the tail end of Sports Center or the very edge of the Twitter universe when Smart, Oklahoma State’s NBA lottery pick candidate from Flower Mound, Texas, got up off the court, turned toward the Tech stands and shoved Tech fan Jeff Orr - not hard enough that Orr fell or anything, just enough that the man was momentarily startled.
Smart received a three-game suspension Sunday, a significant penalty for him and a blow to an OSU team fighting to find its way in the Big 12 Conference.
No one earned a letter of distinction in Lubbock on Saturday night. Not Smart, not Orr, not the refs, and not Oklahoma State Coach Travis Ford who refused to criticize his player in the postgame news conference, mumbling something vague about how he was still looking into it.
Ford did much better at the Sunday news conference after the penalty had been announced and Smart had issued an apology. “This was a serious mistake, but Marcus has an opportunity to learn from this,” Ford said. “We all can learn from this.”
Ford declined to get into what was said between Orr, a Tech fan who has been trying to rile opposing players for years (check You-Tube to see him flipping off an Aggie player after a dunk), and Smart. “We’re not here to put blame on anybody other than Marcus made a mistake and feels terrible about it,” Ford said.
Of course so did Orr - his triumphant smile after the shove said it all - but he won’t be held accountable the way a 19-year-old basketball player will. ESPN’s Jay Bilas suggested on Twitter that if Orr is a booster or represents the school’s interests, how much responsibility does Texas Tech have for what took place?
Tech is conducting its own investigation of an incident on what should have been a wonderful night for Red Raider basketball in a rarely sold out arena. Orr reportedly volunteered Sunday not to attend Tech games for the rest of the season. That seems like a good idea.
Regardless of what Orr said - no matter how indelicate, yes even that word - players can’t be excused for charging into the stands. At the same time, we all need to lose this notion that fans paid their money so they can behave however they want. That’s never been the case, and it isn’t today.
The good news is that after hours of TV replays and all the hundreds of column inches dedicated to this matter, Smart barely did anything.
It was a shove, and not much of one, certainly not enough to knock Orr to the ground. It didn’t take Ron Artest throwing haymakers at Detroit Pistons fans this time to bring people to their senses.
It doesn’t solve all of the college game’s concerns. “Fans nowadays are closer to the court than they’ve ever been,” Ford said.
In the end, this will be The Shove Heard Round the World. Smart will get maximum exposure of the kind no player seeks. And the chances of a similar occurrence or something even worse happening in the near future have been reduced dramatically.
Sports, Pages 14 on 02/10/2014