The Kansas basketball fight gave us some of the greatest photographs of a sports fight

The bench-clearing, everyone-inciting melee between Kansas and Kansas State Tuesday night was one of the most impressively ludicrous sporting moments of the year. What started with a block quickly became anarchy, involving both teams, law enforcement, cheerleaders and students.

At this point you’ve probably seen the video, but like all things the devil is in the details.

Obviously we all know there was a wild fight, but inside of that moment was dozens of small vignettes, which are stories in their own right.

Perhaps the weirdest thing about how all this went down is how intense and frightening everything was on the floor, but joyous in the stands. Look at everyone watching in this photo. There’s legitimately only a couple of people who seem disturbed by what they’re watching — the rest are just excited to see a fight. Humans are so weird.

The alternate angle of this moment captures so much more as well.

This isn’t just a photo, it’s a work of art. Frescos of this deserve to be painted everywhere. I’m not saying we need to celebrate violence specifically, but I am saying we need to celebrate this moment specifically. It’s not just the chair shot itself, which is violent and wild in its own right — but it’s also everyone else in this photo that makes it special. It’s a tableau of emotion the same way all great photos are, even when the subject matter is horrific.

This woman who looks like Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.”

This shocked viking.

This well-meaning chap who thought he could stop a chair with his hands.

This fan realized it too.

The cheerleaders caught in the middle of all this.

So many ancillary people were forced to get involved in this brawl who had no beef on the court and found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. This teetering cheerleader really says it all as he struggled to keep his balance with everything else going on around him.

We are starting to learn the fallout from the brawl. Self announced De Sousa would be indefinitely suspended as a result of the incident, with the NCAA likely to get involved soon. This photo serves as the best example of everyone coming to terms with what happened. Everything just looks exhausted as they begin to reflect on what took place. The uncertainty, the realization of how bad this went is ever-present in this one photo.

Discussions of where the Kansas-Kansas State brawl exists in the pantheon of horrific sports moments will surely cement it on “worst of” lists for decades to come. For now we can look at these images as a reminder of the human toll of this incident. A shameful moment nobody is proud of waking up on Wednesday and perhaps shaping collegiate sports for years to come.