It’s fair to say Jack Trice stadium Saturday was alive with a level of excitement few have seen in a long time. Even Coach Dan McCarney was insanely excited about his team’s performance, and rightly so.

The game rejuvenated a dismal Cyclone spirit, and the inspired performance got fans excited once again about football in Ames, Iowa.

However, the excellent performance by the football team was marred by some folks who got a little overzealous. Unfortunately, I am not talking about the fans.

The various police agencies were going to see to it that no one got onto the field or took down the goalpost. They obviously failed on both accounts. There were at least a couple hundred people on the field and they did get the goalpost from the north end of the stadium.

Yes, they had a job to do and I can understand that, but I vehemently disagree with the way they did it. Various people were dragged to the ground and kneed in the back and neck.

There were some reports of pepper spray being used, but officials denied this and said it was a fan who used it. Yeah, right. I know I never leave for the game without my mace.

The police that were there (Ames Police, Story County Sheriffs, Department of Public Safety and the Iowa State Patrol) all were acting as if they were auditioning for the next episode of “COPS” and using the students as their personal punching bags.

Police officials were quoted as saying they were there because the initial push of students was smashing those seated in the first few rows. That is totally inaccurate. They were there as early as the beginning of the fourth quarter. The police keeping the crowd back did more to keep the first few rows smashed up than anything.

They may have been doing their job, but it certainly looked like they were enjoying themselves. They seemed like they were having a good time kneeing unarmed people’s faces into the turf.

What are we talking about here? A bunch of dangerous drunken criminals, armed to the teeth, who would stop at nothing to destroy everything in their path? Or maybe it was just a group of screaming fans excited to finally see their team win a game? I was there, and would say the latter is much more likely.

Let’s put this into perspective. Tearing down the goalpost is a college tradition when a team wins a big game. What is the problem with continuing a fun tradition? At Iowa State, it seems any tradition having to do with fun is forbidden. Ask those who didn’t sign the Veishea pledge.

This is the only school I have ever seen where the students are arrested for taking down a goalpost. Go anywhere else around the country, and it’s a welcome tradition. Fans of the Arizona Cardinals even took one down when they beat the Dallas Cowboys a few weeks back.

Many say the goal posts are expensive enough to warrant police intervention to protect them. At $10,000+ per post, they say students need to be stopped from destroying such expensive property.

At a school that just gave its basketball coach a $250,000 raise and built a $6 million press box, one would think money is no object. You would also think the “friends of the program” would be happy to see the team win and would gladly let some of their donations finance the purchase of a new one.

Yes, there were some who were destroying stop signs, light posts and barricades. I can’t speak for them, but I know they were a definite minority. Most of the students there wanted only the goalpost and didn’t want to destroy other public property.

I’ve tried in the past to be as supportive of the police as possible. Being a strong believer in law and order, I know they need the public’s support to do their job effectively. That public also includes the students, however. When they mace a crowd whose only intention is supporting their team, I have trouble championing their cause.

President Jischke didn’t seem too concerned with the situation either. He had a front row seat on the Jacobson building balcony, and wasn’t upset at seeing students getting roughed up. Why should he? Those students aren’t donating enough money to the university for him to care.

The police really didn’t stop anything. We still got the goalpost, and we still had our fun. Thanks to a few brave, clever souls, Lake Laverne was cluttered once again with the familiar yellow aluminum tubing.

I know from now on we’ll be tearing down the posts only for the big games and not for just ending our losing streak. I just hope the officers act a bit more responsibly when we beat Colorado in two weeks.

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Robert Zeis is a senior in finance from Des Moines.