The thrill of victory is all-consuming. It’s this surge of emotions that makes grown men slap each other’s butts, kiss and scream “I love you!” on the courts of congested coliseums full of less-than-tolerant, and also half-in-bag celebrants doing the exact same thing in the stands. It is also the sensation that justifies rushing a football field like the French storming the Bastille.

Nowhere is the intense excitement of winning better demonstrated than the arena and stadium stands of America’s universities. From the foul-mouthed Cameron Crazies of Durham to the contrived, goldenrod swathed students from the other end of Commonwealth Avenue; from the Pine Tree-Huggers of Northern California to the skilled penmen of a Midwest marching band, storming the court or field after a big win is one of college sports’ most hallowed traditions.

But the sacredness of this tradition has faded.

When I was 11, I first noticed that the phenomenon had begun to wear quite thin. During the winter of 1998, my family attended a Seton Hall basketball game against Syracuse University at Continental Airlines Arena. The Seton Hall student section barely put a dent into the cavernous building, as rows of empty seats filled the upper deck.

The paltry attendance was blamed on the fact that, at that point, neither team was very good. Seton Hall was a year away from its improbable Sweet 16 run, while Syracuse was in a post-Final Four, pre-Carmelo Anthony transition period. Yet, when the final whistle blew and the hometown Pirates won the game, the students swarmed the court, like Black Friday shoppers to Macy’s, as if they had just taken down the regal Tar Heels or Blue Devils, not the mildly talented, slightly above-average Orange.

Up until that point, I had believed storming the court was a sacred, “win of the decade” celebration for college basketball fans. I thought it meant that the team had achieved something so remarkable that the only possible response was jumping the barriers that separated chiseled athlete from pot-bellied, acrylic-faced spectator to share in the splendor of the triumph with the winning team.

Apparently I was wrong — the unwritten rules of sport now permitted fans to charge the playing surface after a victory over any mediocre opponent, such as the strikingly unremarkable 1998-99 Syracuse Orange Men’s Basketball Team.

In earlier generations, this inflated response to a solid victory never would have been tolerated. A few years ago, my family and I attended a Penn State football game as the guests of our neighbor, Fred Miller, a Nittany Lion alumnus and diehard fan of JoePa and everything else “Linebacker U.” related. On the way to the game, Mr. Miller recounted stories of PSU’s glory days, including some tales from his four years at the state college. Only one of his stories — his obvious favorite — was about rushing the Beaver Stadium field.

When Mr. Miller was a junior, his Nittany Lions squared off against heavily favored Boston College. After defeating Doug Flutie and the over-hyped Eagles, he and his classmates escaped their confines in the vast pews behind the end zone to continue their festival on the field’s fresh sod and chalk.

Overcome by joy, Mr. Miller attempted to assist other students in tearing the uprights out of the back of the end zone and deftly scurried up the post to sit on the cross bar and bask in the nirvana of victory.

However, this euphoria would not last long. Later that night, he received a telephone call from his girlfriend’s mother — his future mother-in-law — informing him that he was famous, or in her opinion, infamous. His girlfriend’s entire family had watched him on TV wildly whooping while he straddled the goalpost like a rodeo bull.

Sadly, armed guards now encircle the uprights as if they were guarding the Pope-mobile, ruining students’ fun, but perhaps mercifully saving them from future ridicule following ESPN Classic broadcasts. Often, fans are even prevented from rushing the court or field by an overwhelming surge of security forces. For evidence, watch the end of this year’s BCS Championship Game where post-game Sentinels stood mimicking Hands Across America. But these measures were enacted for a reason: College students have sorely abused the time-honored practice of storming the field.

So when my best friend Joe called earlier this year and shrieked something into his cell phone along the lines of, “Put on ESPN, quick, we just beat Clemson, we rushed the field!” I was happy for him and the other Virginia Tech football fans, but couldn’t help thinking, “Clemson? A perennial powerhouse beating Clemson warrants that kind of celebration?” I imagined that a win over Florida State would result in Virginia Tech students being granted the rest of the semester off while a victory over mighty Miami would earn free diplomas for current students, boosters and beer salesmen, alike.

Clearly, fans’ on-field celebrations do not mean what they used to. Yet, I still long to experience thousands of joyous undergrads jammed together in a frozen mosh pit after BU’s next big win.

Imagine hundreds of fans spilling onto the ice at Agganis, haplessly sliding into one another in accidental re-enactments of the season’s most bone-shattering checks every time the Terriers pulled out a tight one against BC. Maybe we are seriously missing out on one of big time college’s grandest experiences.

But then again, at least we won’t look like idiots in front of our future in-laws.

David Brand is a sophomore in the School of Education and is an Assistant City Editor.