Confetti swept, streets cleared, celebrations over and yet, there are still pending charges for the events that took place the night the Gators men's basketball team won the national championship.
Police arrested three people in Gainesville with, quite literally, the most high-profile case still under investigation.
Steven Buchanan, 28, climbed the traffic light at 1700 W. University Ave., shimmied to the end of the pole arm and eventually fell onto the pavement beneath him, according to the Gainesville Police Department.
"Time was literally in slow motion because I was just waiting for something bad to happen," said Savannah Woods, a junior at the University of Florida, who was out celebrating and witnessed Buchanan fall to the ground. "It definitely ruined the vibe of the celebration for a little bit."
An incident report describes how Buchanan's actions placed himself, and the nearly 2,000 people under him, in danger with police noting that the traffic light was not meant to sustain Buchanan's weight or his bouncing. Damages to the traffic light amounted to just over $300, police said.
Buchanan told police in his hospital room that it was, "Very stupid of him to climb the pole" and he, "Did not know why he did it," GPD said.
Buchanan's actions beg the question: Why do people make certain decisions they may later regret, especially in a crowd or after a team's victory?
Erin Westgate is an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Florida and described what might go through someone's head in a moment of victory bliss.
"When you're in a big group and you're a sports fan, it's sort of like wearing a costume. Like you're there as a Gators fan, you're not necessarily there in your identity," Westgate said.
She related this to the term "deindividuation," where one no longer feels like they are an identifiable individual but are just lost in a crowd or part of a collective group.
Edward Hirt, a professor of psychology at Indiana University, studies many aspects of social behavior and has specifically studied sport fanship.
"We get an indirect boost to our self-esteem by aligning ourselves to the winners," Hirt said.
He related this to people bragging about being from the same hometown as a celebrity. It has nothing to do with that individual, yet they feel connected to that famous person, ultimately boosting their ego when they did not do anything at all.
"I think that the implication was we feel better about ourselves when we have those kind of connections in place. So our team wins, we feel better about ourselves," Hirt said.
This parallels what happened after the championship game on April 7, 2025. The Gators won, and many people were feeling good.
Jason Lanter, a professor of psychology at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania, has been studying social identity theory in sports fans for 25 years.
He said that celebrating in different ways is what a "subset of sports fans do."
There are some who go out and celebrate in a nice, happy way, but there are others who "take advantage of the opportunity and turn it into something destructive and weird and odd and do stuff that they would not normally do alone," he said.
Crowd celebrations have turned tragic Gainesville's past. In 2007, a drunk driver hit and killed GPD Lt. Corey Dahlem as he was patrolling the celebrations of Florida's last men's basketball title.
The city of Gainesville issued a request in the hours before the game, asking "fans to celebrate responsibly."
The mayor of Gainesville, Harvey Ward, reminded the city that they are good at celebrating but need to do it in the right way.
"Please keep safety and respect for other celebrants in mind and make good choices," Ward said.
The idea of climbing objects like light poles or traffic lights has been going on for years. It can demonstrate the dedication of a fan, projecting that they are tough and can do things others cannot, Lanter said.
"From a social identity perspective for the folks who do it, they're just trying to show that they're a big fan of the team," he said.
While alcohol and other substances can play a role, it's not the main contributing factor for fandom behavior, according to Lanter. When people are caught up in a crowd, it is easy to make decisions that you would not typically make, he said, largely because of mob mentality.
That feeling of togetherness, Lanter said, decreases self-regulation and thinking about actions and their consequences.
"The biggest predictor of people's behavior is the situations that they're in, not their individual traits," Westgate said.
Westgate related being in a big crowd to being drunk.
"It's a totally different way of reaching the same state," she said
"It frees you up from your identity. It frees you up from your roles. It frees you up from who you are in your serious, everyday life. It can be really joyous but it also means that we lose that sense of responsibility."
Charges for criminal mischief, disorderly conduct and resisting an officer without violence are still pending for Buchanan.
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