Does any college sporting event have alcohol sales? I’ll exclude certain events such as the NCAA tournament and major bowl games played at a neutral location. I’ll also exclude club luxury levels for alumni who donate a substantial sum. I’m talking about beer vendors at a college event.
I believe the only time I’ve ever bought alcohol at a college sporting event was at a Long Beach State baseball game about ten years ago. I’ve never seen alcohol for sale at college football, basketball, or hockey events.
Alcohol was sold at University of Kentucky basketball games up until the mid-90s, because UK doesn’t own or operate the building they play in (Rupp Arena) and so it wasn’t directly their decision.
After a couple of drunk-driving incidents involving UK athletes, though, the University put its foot down and now the taps are disconnected for games, and alcohol advertisements can’t be displayed during games.
When Tulane University played its football games in the Superdome (late '80s, early '90s) the bars were open. We dressed up for games and it was sort of a cocktail party/football game scene.
I went to Tulane as well and that is correct. Louisiana and New Orleans in particular kept the drinking age 18 for all practical purposes until long after the rest of the country had gone to 21 (I graduated in 1995 and all alcohol was basically 100% legal for the 18+ crowd). It is a little different today although I can’t imagine the New Orleans schools not having alcohol at games. As to the rest of the country, there must be a to of them anyway because college sports are big business and attract lots of older people.
I’m fairly certain RPI still sells beer at its hockey games, but I might be wrong. Of course, when your school has a bar in the student union, selling beer at a sporting event doesn’t seem so bad.
Louisiana went out of its way to satisfy the U.S. Department Transportation Department while still getting the funds that they were using as extortion and keep the drinking age effectively 18. Alcohol was illegal but buy for 18 year olds but legal for people to sell it to them. There was no penalty for 18 year olds to buy it however and possession was also legal. We could have alcohol in our freshman doors as long as we followed the small list of school rules (no kegs in dorm rooms). We could go to bars and drink (there were several right on the edge of campus and the campus and we had one in the University Center). We could drink on the school quads. In short, they made it perfectly legal for 18 year olds while the rest of the country folded. The laws are a little more strict today because of internal pressure within the state but I assume that the same model could be followed elsewhere. The mandate to raise the drinking age to 18 nationwide wasn’t exactly fair and square nor locked up very tightly.