The people were flying off the shelf

Perhaps this is not a malaphor, and just a phrase misused, but I had to post it anyway.  I heard this one last night on The Nightly Sports Call, a sports call-in t.v. show in the Pittsburgh area.  The host, Bob Pompeani, was referring to the previous night’s show and the callers’ reaction to the video showing Rutgers coach Mike Rice’s antics.  Bob of course meant to say “flying off the handle” but perhaps was thinking of the many callers and trying to respond to all of them.