There is also one at Fratton Park, but they aren’t part of the stadium and trade normally during matchdays.
There are moves afoot to change the situation, partly to stop the tempation to get tanked up before going, and the half time swill-up.
It is a stupid rule stupidly enforced. At Spurs they even enforce the rule when the show matches on the big scren. ie you are watching footbll on the telly and you still can’t have a beer!
You can’t drink in the executive boxes during the game too.
I’m feeling it Legomancer. Now I live just far enough off campus to avoid that. But I still get to watch them scurry outta the stadium! You don’t go to LSU do you?
Well, I was there too, and I was probably somewhere between shit-faced drunk and happily buzzed. I think a reason you took this opinion is due to the quite uncommon circumstances of the game. Here’s the key factors.
Its a Bears-Packers game, clearly the biggest rivalry in football with probably the most rabid dislike between fans.
Its a rare Monday Night game for the home team Bears in recent years.
Its occuring on a college campus in whats effectively a once in a lifetime shot for Champaign residents and U of I students and alums.
As has been said, college football games are typically worse than pro-games from a alcohol standpoint. The fact that this game took place in a college town puts the game somehwere in the middle. I think its important to note that there shouldn’t be an outright indictment of NCAA games, because alot of the drunkeness is limited to the student sections for obvious reasons. The upside however is that NCAA games are almost always very one-sided in their partisanship. Tickets are mostly only available to students and alums, so the chances of the opposing teams’ fans getting into fights is slim.
In the case of this game, you have a unhealthy mix of Packer and Bear fans, exasperated by the availability of seats that are usally taken by season ticket holders since the game isn’t in Chicago proper. Alot of the Packer fans who can’t usually get tickets to their games happily snapped up these tickets.
I will say that alot of people assumed that I was alot drunker than I was because I was awfully vocal in my heckling of Packer fans. For the most part its in good fun, but alot of people don;t take it that way. Its part of the atmosphere, like it or not. So perhaps that could be part of the reason for your impression.
I’ve been to lots of games in Soldier Field and Memorial Stadium (being a Chicagoan and U of I alum), and this was easily the most obnoxious and hostile. It happened for lots of reason, many that I mentioned above. You’ve got to tone it down several levels if the game had been Bears-Jaguars in Chicago on a Sunday morning. Don’t give up on it yet, try again when they reopen Soldier Field against someone other than the Packers.
Actually, Louisiana is VERY alcohollic place (sorry to anyone who lives here). The parents are absolutely as drunk as the students! They’re the ones who tailgate and drink all day, the students go out to eat then go to the game. Only the Fraternities typically have pre-game binges… and they save a lot of their drinking for after the game too. However, only the students throw cups when we score.
[quote[Celtic/Rangers [/quote]
The Russell/McHale/Bird Celtics would kick the Rangers ass if the rangers had A-Rod. Or Messier, even. Boys playing, indeed.
That must have been a frightful drive from Champaign back up/down(?) to Chicago.
My college was pretty conservative so I’d not experienced drinking during games until attending Cowboys and Oilers games. Don’t really remember public drunkeness being much of an issue at either.
I am happy to know though that mass drunkeness was a possibility when Philly fans cheered Irvin’s critical neck injury up there.
Hey, were you wearing orange and blue? I think I may have seen you! Let me guess - you were the guy in the Urlacher jersey!
I guess a big problem for me is that I’m not much of a football fan. Used to be, both pro and college, but have progressively declined in interest after 85. Can name many more members from that team than this year’s. “I’m momma’s boy Otis…” Was neat seeing Danimal at halftime, tho.
And I’ve been doing a good job moderating my alcohol intake recently. And I have 3 adolescent kids. So I may be more sensitive to such things than I was before.
But my BIL had a spare ticket, and I figgered, heck, one last road trip. Got to visit my niece, a fine arts soph. Kid gets to take classes like glass blowing! Had some great za at Pop D’s as well. The White Horse is still ther, but what the hell did they do to Murph’s? Someone musta put light bulbs in the fixtures and bought a mop?! Sheesh!
And tell me about Memorial Stadium. My first game there as a student was to watch a thrilling overtime 0-0 tie with Wisconsin. I shoulda known great things were in store. Chant with me, "Moe must go!"
We used to bring in 10 pound bags of ice for our gin and tonics. Somehow or another those octogenarian ticket agents never asked why we were carrying parkas when it was 80 degrees out.
owlstretcher I always figure that those rabid footie fans HAD to be shitfaced - if only to tolerate those mindnumbingly boring games. “One guy kicked the ball. Now another guy kicked the ball. Now there all running again.” Riots, random acts of violence, fan trampling, and stands collapsing are all the more impressive if I am to assume they are done while (even relatively) sober.
The drive down really wasn’t bad. We left Chi at 2 p.m., and things were only tight thru Chicago. Stayed near the limit due to mucho cops.
Got in in plenty of time for a leisurely dinner. Left the car in the restaurant lot and walked to the game. Driving home was crowded all the way, but it moved. A little nervous knowing how many other cars might contain drunk drivers.
We had a few beers (2 3/4 pitchers between 4) at dinner, and carried a few with us to the game. My last one was one I drank while walking. A couple of other guys (easily) snuck a couple in. During the game we bought coffee - I because I had hit my self-imposed limit, and my BIL and the other 2 because we didn’t want to wait in those lines.
BIL plenty sober enough to drive by the time we hit the road around 11:45.
Man, I don’t remember the last time I stayed up til 2:45! Very happy I was working at home the following day.
It’s been a lot of work, but I think I am actually beginning to instill new habits.
That night I exceeded my personal daily limit of 4 - but I think I had a total of 5-6, including a Lite when we stopped to pick a guy up en route @ 3. Didn’t get behind the wheel of my car until nearly 12 hours later.
So I can live with that being my heaviest drinking episode in 6+ months.
Kinda sad to have that be one of the main things I’ve accomplished recently, but hey, it’s something!
Back when I was in school, '94-98, Murph’s was the way it was, like you remember it. Then they opened up a BW3 next door. It survived for a few years, but the high prices and 21 entry age eventually caught up with them and they closed. It wasn’t long before Murphy’s decided to go with the trend of rebuilding Green street and bought up the old BW3 space. They knocked down the wall in betwen, and doubled its size and basically turned the whole bar into BW3 with the name Murphy’s. Now its clean, the beer’s expensive and the servers are hot…this is not the Murphy’s I remember.
As for me, there’s a great game tomorrow in Tiger Stadium - LSU vs South Carolina I think. So I’m going out now to get my drink on. Gotta start sometime!
While Philly fans have a tendency to go overboard, I for one can’t help but smile knowing how rabid my city is about it’s football team. You are right about how out of hand they tend to get and at times they can be an emabarrassment to our fair city. One has to expect that rivers of beer and testosterone will eventualy create a few unseemly situations. But I think it rather unfair to put all Iggles fans in one catagory. Most of us just shake our heads at the goons in the 700 level and return to watching the game. Only on those special occasions that Dallas visits do the fans as a whole tend to get out of hand. It’s a pretty shitty thing to insult an entire city of sports fans because of a few bad apples all the way up in the beer swilling hell that is the 700 level.
I’m at Penn State. This weekend is homecoming and the game starts around noon. Judging from the sounds I heard outside while I was in my last class yesterday, I think everyone started drinking yesterday…
Sporting events seem to be one of the few places in America where you can be openly intoxicated and it’s tolerated.
Never figured out why that is so.
Or perhaps it’s just that there are a lot of people gathered together in one place and you notice the normal percentage of idiots in the world who get drunk all the time.
UCLA football games at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena have a fair number of drunk fans, but they don’t seem to cause a problem. There aren’t that many who do get drunk because 99.9% of all the fans drive in. The ones who drink are, I hope, those who got a ride from someone else.
The visiting fans who come in on buses (especially students) seem to be fairly well lit by the time they arrive. UCLA’s opener this year was a night game against Colorado State and the CSU students appeared to have put back a few, but they caused no trouble during the game.
One thing I thought of over the weekend was that I doubt the level of drunken behavior I experienced was effectively communicated on TV. I mean, ther might be a shot or 2 of idiots with their shirts off and their bodies painted, with a wink and a nod assumption that those guys were well primed, but I doubt the background roar on TV made audible the loud boorish insults, and the camera probably did not show the fights in the stands (I saw 2), the police presence, the massive lines for beer/johns, the huge piles of empties after the game, etc.
I don’t go to many sporting events. It just struck me as a little interesting that my primary impression would likely be nigh invisible in the telecast which was viewed by millions. I guess the same might be said for the infield at the Ky Derby or Indy 500.
Omni - if things have changed since 98, think of how they have changed since 86! What I found most striking was the contrast between things that have been redone (at least with facades if not entirely rebuilt) so as to be unrecognizeable, and then there would be things like dorms, frats, the Illini Inn (forgot to bring my mug club card - #2229) which looked like they hadn’t even been given a good sweeping in the 16 years since I left.
Riots, random acts of violence, fan trampling, and stands collapsing are all the more impressive if I am to assume they are done while (even relatively) sober.