Police were forced to use pepper spray on rowdy fans following the 2001 Stanley Cup win by Colorado. AP

The story was buried on page B-11 of Thursday's Hartford (Conn.) Courant, a very good daily newspaper placed in a ticklish position by this particular piece of news. A University of Connecticut senior, barely one month shy of graduation, had just finished watching the Connecticut men's basketball team win the national championship on Monday night, when she walked into the street to find her car flipped over in the street and destroyed, as an object of -- and I use this term very loosely -- "celebration." (In fairness to the Courant, the paper's local section also had a front-page column on the revelry that followed the school's historic men's and women's same-year titles.)

Two cars were tossed and destroyed after Emeka Okafor (a smart and sensible guy who, by the way, would find this madness absolutely mystifying) and his teammates handled Georgia Tech on Monday night. Two more were destroyed on Tuesday night after Diana Taurasi and the Connecticut women's team held off Tennessee to win their third consecutive national title. That's four vehicles totaled, in addition to numerous spontaneous bonfires and drunken arrests, all in the cause of celebration.

This has become the flip side of America sports success. Not long ago Sports Illustrated columnist Rick Reilly was caught in the craziness after the Colorado Avalanche won the Stanley Cup and found himself staggering into a convenience store in search of water to splash the pepper spray from his burning eyes.

In 1996, I had a similar experience after Florida State upset then No. 1-ranked Florida in Tallahassee. It is common practice for writers to make their way to the sideline at the end of football games, in order to facilitate access to the postgame interview areas. It's too difficult to get from the press box at the conclusion of the game, so we are allowed get downstairs early. At the end of this game, a mob of fans surged toward the goalposts with a mind toward tearing them down and it -- along with anyone else in the area -- was hit with pepper spray. Personally, I got a light dose, which was enough to know that I never want to feel the full brunt. It was painful and scary experience. I can see why the stuff works.

But that's a minor issue. The larger question is: What has transpired in the last decade or so to initiate this nonstop succession of "celebrations," in which peoples' lives are placed in danger because some team won something?

Clearly, there are two kinds of celebration. The first is the kind I was caught in at Florida State (and several other times, I should add, although in most other cases I managed to avoid the pepper spray), which takes place inside the stadium or arena. These have always been a problem in the extreme (check out footage of the any of the Celtics' world titles in the '60s), but in recent years have become more frequent. In college football or basketball, for instance, almost any significant victory is cause for storming the court, or the field.

To be in the middle of one of these scenes is to understand that the celebrators have little connection to the event. The mob is usually made up of drunk fans who often motivated by getting their contorted faces on television. (I will resist the temptation to admonish ESPN as the culprit here; although the network clearly embraces storming the court while, at the same time, criticizing it on Outside the Lines, it seems foolish to issue a blanket indictment of TV for such extreme behavior). Schools (and professional teams, where applicable) can -- and should -- do much more to control fan behavior. Most notably, court-stormers should be suspended or expelled from school. Drunks should not be allowed into the building in the first place.

Away from the arena is an entirely different matter. The ruckus in Storrs was only the most recent party gone wild, but it was actually sedate compared to similar celebrations in, say, East Lansing, Mich., after Michigan State won the NCAA title in 2000. Wild revelry now has become commonplace on and around the Michigan State campus every time there is a big game. The precedent has been set and the bar raised. Or lowered, depending on your view.

Now in East Lansing -- and in almost city with unfortunate experience in this area -- police are put on alert whenever a big game is played. Sports sections run stories quoting the coach and players talking about the game; metro sections run stories quoting the mayor and chief of police describing their readiness for tipped-over cars and spontaneous fires.

This leaves the option of two images: burning vehicles -- or police in riot gear preventing the vehicles from burning. Neither is pleasant, and neither has anything to with the joy of winning. Neither has anything to with sports.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Tim Layden weighs in with a Viewpoint every Friday on SI.com.