You missed the sarcasm. ;)

Peace

Alabama-Purdue
 

I was at the Alabama-Purdue game on Saturday night and after an OOB call in front of the students sitting on the endline, the official called a nearby police officer, pointed into the stands about 3 rows back, and had a fan removed from his seats. Several seconds later, the policeman came back and took 2 other fans in the front row, who showed their disgust by arguing with the officer and throwing their jackets into the stands in protest!

For all of you new officials, Rut has made a very good point. DO NOT worry about fans unless they come on the playing court or field or make a threat of physical violence against a participant (player, bench personnel, or game official) and when one of those two things happen, notify game management and let it handle the situation. Game officials should avoid any type of interaction with fans, have game management do its job.

MTD, Sr.

And if you are Roy Williams, you can eject a fan yourself. :D

Peace

Unless you are playing away at Michigan.

The few times I've felt the need to get anyone involved, I just go to game management and have them deal with it as they see fit. Whoever was in control of your facility shouldn't have waited for the officials to have to get involved.

I'll agree they were off base in threatening a forfeit.

Who said this? Just so you know, there is a rule which gives us (the officials) authority to call a technical on the team if their spectators get out of hand. It's to be used sparingly, and carefully, but it's there.

We had 2 gyms running simultaneously, in the other gym the game was Boys' V so more attention was there due to a bigger crowd. Up until then, the fan was being ignored or the coach would look back @ him & request/ask that he stop. The crowd control present @ time asked him to cease, in which he would for a short time. As soon as there was a call on the floor he didn't like, he'd start back up again. Most of his comments were "get glasses", "how could you call that when...", & other comments related to missed/botched calls. Nothing truly offensive or unwarrented.

What caused the floor officials to get involved was his one comment as it was loud enough for everyone to hear. He was asked to stop again & he was being overly defiant.

If all he's saying are the things you listed and similar, then I wouldn't have bothered with him.
That said, if GM (game management) asks him to stop, and he does "for a while" before starting up again, you've got to kick him out when he resumes. He's already been warned. That's completely separate, BTW, from whether or not he actually deserves it based on what was said.

From a Sports team POV, would you want your fan base to be kicked out of the arena for making generalized comments about the calls on the court/field/rink just cause of not agreeing with them?

I've worked crowd control for Football, Basketball, Hockey, & Wrestling, in all those times, we were told to only intervene when a complaint was made that was valid, or there was a chance of fans/participants getting hurt due to conduct. The only person really complaining was the coach. He was asked to tone it down, which he did but the understanding was also there that his daughter was a participant so due to an extenuating circumstance he was more involved as he had a vested interest in the game. The outbursts afterwards were not as vocal until his daughter got called for her 4th foul in which he thought was a BS Call & that's when he actually stepped into the boundary of being a hazard to the fans/participants.

The fan/parent was making generalized statements that anyone would of made, except that he was louder than most. He stayed in his seat the whole time up until he was told to leave. The floor officials were ignoring everything he was saying until the one call against his daughter, that he thought didn't happen. It wasn't till his comment that the floor officials even paid any attention to him.

Pretty sad that Williams would get someone removed for such a trivial thing, and kind of pathetic that security sheepishly did as King Williams ordered, even when the fan clearly had done nothing wrong.

I watched the video of the incident included in the article. Not only did event security get involved but so did Campus Police & State Police.

hope Williams is nice enough to apologize. "emotions, the game, yada yada I'm sorry for being such a baby."

Coaches who routinely drop f-bombs on referees like it is nothing and they have fans removed for saying something to their players...funny stuff.

I did leave it open-ended with loopholes possible that a coach could get T'd due to actions/comments from spectators.