ASU’s Sun Devil Stadium bans tortillas

THIS IS A BRIDGE TOO FAR.

Ohhhh we can still bring a small umbrella into the stadium? GO TO HELL. TORTILLAS OR DEATH.

The context is that students and fans have been throwing tortillas toward the field for years, because THROWING A TORTILLA IS FUN and because TORTILLAS ARE DELICIOUS AND SHOULD BE CELEBRATED and because why wouldn’t you throw a tortilla? God made them shaped like Frisbees for a reason.

ASU has long tried to enforce “NO TORTILLAS” with a zeal bordering on fascism. In the words of a brilliant student reporter 12 years ago:

Inside the stadium, guards walk up and down the rows, checking for tortillas and confiscating them.

I don’t care. I’m going to take a cue from my skater-punk little brother and stand up for a proud and fun tradition.

But Arizona State isn’t the only school with a tortilla problem. Let’s examine the history of tortilla tossing.

It goes back years and years, and is a long-stading tradition at Texas Tech.

Let’s start with a little tortilla-chucking history. Rooster Bowl history indicates that Texas Tech students have allegedly been hurling tortillas since 1993 in a rebellious response to the Texas A&M quarterback’s derision of Tech as “good for nothing but making tortillas.”

UCSB had a serious tortilla problem and nearly lost a game because of it.

The Gauchos would win 65-61 but not before nearly being assessed a technical foul with 0.6 seconds left when, leading by two, yellow-clad fans sitting behind their bench revived the UCSB tradition of flinging tortillas onto the court to celebrate the impending victory.

Baylor students throw tortillas off a dang bridge:

The ledgend goes, that if you are able to land a tortilla on the platform during your freshman year, you will graduate from Baylor in four years. This is a huge attraction to Baylor freshman and is a great Baylor tradition.

Even Arizona has had problems with tortillas.

Likins said when he started at the UA in 1997, students threw tortillas in the air at the end of the ceremonies to celebrate their graduation, but in more recent years, tortillas seem to constantly fly everywhere.

He said the airborne tortillas unnerve speakers who are unfamiliar with the practice, and embarrass the university because it is a “childish” and wasteful act that graduating students should stop.

Today, we are all that guy’s skater-punk little brother. *puts fist in air*