Find them, and ban them. The Alabama fans who stood in the stands at Bryant-Denny on Saturday night and threw bottles and cans at Georgia players should be identified on video and barred from games, students included. Throwing a beer can at a player because you're mad about a flag isn't a gray area.
Here's what happened. Georgia beat Alabama 20-17, moved to 6-0, and won in Tuscaloosa for the first time since 2014. As the Bulldogs walked off, coaches told their own players to put their helmets back on, because garbage was raining down from the stands. The public address announcer asked the crowd to stop. The junk slowed briefly, then picked back up and started landing closer to the players. A water bottle came down near a cheerleader, who had to step back to avoid it.
You can be as furious as you want about the no-call on Alabama's last drive, and about Dijon Lee Jr. handing Georgia a free first down with a personal foul in the final minutes. Kalen DeBoer told Lee "You cost us the game," and he wasn't wrong. None of that gives a grown adult license to launch a bottle at a cheerleader who had nothing to do with any of it.
A few idiots in a packed stadium are hard to spot in the moment, and no pregame policy stops every one of them. That's true. It doesn't change anything. Nobody needs to predict this before kickoff. They need to look at the tape afterward and act on it.
The SEC has already shown how this plays out. In 2024 the conference fined Texas $250,000 after fans threw debris during a Georgia game and ordered the school to use its security and video resources to identify who did it. Texas came back and said a video review turned up nobody. End of story, nobody banned, nobody expelled, case closed. LSU, fined that same stretch, identified fans and barred them for the year. One school tried. One school shrugged.
So spare me the Bryant-Denny version of "we couldn't find anyone." A modern SEC stadium is wired with cameras pointed at every section for broadcast and security. A venue that can show you a replay of a receiver's heel from four angles doesn't suddenly go blind when fans throw objects at opponents. If Alabama's review comes back empty, it means the school decided not to look.
So far, the SEC hasn't fined Alabama, banned any fans, or issued a statement. Fine, give them time. But if the answer in a few weeks is the Texas answer, the SEC should treat "no culprits found" as its own violation and fine the school again for it.
