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The postgame handshake line has long been a staple of college basketball. However, there’s one team that’s no longer taking part after Rick Pitino announced St. John’s will be forgoing the ritual without really offering a solid explanation.
Anyone who grew up playing sports is intimately familiar with the handshake lines that are primarily used to instill the importance of sportsmanship in impressionable young children (and also likely familiar with the sore losers who spit into their hands after losing).
Those handshake lines are largely absent from pro sports with the notable exception of the ones that form after two NHL teams wrap up a playoff series. Football coaches at the NFL and college levels also cap things off with a meeting at midfield, and while players have a tendency to exchange pleasantries on the gridiron, it is wildly less formal than the processions we’re treated to after a college basketball game.
Rick Pitino is intimately familiar with that tradition when you consider he’s in the midst of his 37th season as a college basketball coach who’s been doing his thing since the 1970s. However, the man who is currently helming the ship at St. John’s hopped online on Thursday to somewhat randomly announce he and the rest of the members of the Red Storm will be forgoing postgame handshake lines going forward.
I certainly have great respect for the coaches and teams we play but after witnessing multiple problems with the postgame handshake line, we will take a page out of the NBA playbook and refrain.
— Rick Pitino (@RealPitino) December 19, 2024
As far as I can tell, that decision wasn’t sparked by any recent incident involving St. John’s (or any other team for that matter).
We were treated to a very ugly situation following a game between Incarnate Word and Texas A&M-Commerce last season, and while Michigan head coach Juwan Howard notably landed in some very hot water for throwing a punch after losing to Wisconsin in 2022, it’s hard to imagine it played a role in Pitino’s decision.
It’s a pretty tiny development in the grand scheme of things, but it’s also a bit hard not to wonder what really sparked it.