I recently read that my alma mater (U of Illinois) is planning on allowing the sale of beer at football and basketball games. I guess they thought it would encourage folk to attend games and stay the duration. I was a little surprised at my reaction - I thought it did not somehow seem appropriate.
What are your thoughts? Experiences? Do most colleges allow beer sales?
I couldn’t care less about college sports - at my alma mater or elsewhere. I’m pretty opposed to the money and resources that go into college sports, and the fiction of “student athletes.” And when I attended the school, we certainly snuck beer of booze into any games we attended. But give the issues of campus binge drinking, and the fact that a good portion of any undergrads attending games would be underage, the sale of beer strikes me as not sending the best message.
My university did a few sports events that they also sold beer at (though it was not the norm, most events were ‘dry’). It actually reduced the binge aspect as I saw it. When you don’t have to sneak around drinking, and drinking someplace on the side of the main event, you also don’t have to pound the drink down to get a buzz and can let it happen more naturally while enjoying the event. So the event becomes the attraction to hang around and not the beer car. Also the school can monitor the condition of the students easier to tell of they had too much.
My take on it is try it out and see how ti goes, make adjustments if needed or if it doesn’t work out at least you tried.
California State University ended their ban on beer sales at games in 2017. I have a friend who works at Sac State in food service and have heard nothing negative about it.
I have no problem with it, and I went to Florida State so it’s certainly a campus with a lot of drinking.
I’d much rather people buy beer at the stadium than smuggle in a flask. I’ve seen some quite drunk students in the student sections because they dumped half a flask into a Coke and got quite drunk.
About the only real downside I can see is that a lot of the early season day games are REALLY hot, and beer drinking might not be the best idea if keeping hydrated is a consideration.
Memorial Stadium in Berkeley allows it in certain areas. Anywhere near the student section is not one of them.
I remember back in the days when the Oakland Raiders would play a preseason game in Berkeley every year, and alcohol wasn’t sold in the stadium back then, either.
Since when? They’re not on current lists that I can find (e.g.), and when I went there, more than 5 years ago granted, the employees all had no idea whether they did or not (they didn’t).
On the other hand, the guys waiting in line with water bottle gin seemed to be enjoying themselves. No issue with it, college sports aren’t anymore pure than the NFL so they should be allowed to sell $10 Bud Light, too.
Most college students cannot afford to get drunk on $11.50 beers. But I agree with kanicbird, when the colleges realized that the problem was not legal, controlled alcohol sales, but the prohibition aspect of it, it cut down on a lot of the problems.
For example, recently, I attended a tour of a university with my daughter. They had an afternoon music performance where beer was sold. In order to buy beer, you had to go into a certain line where they checked ID, even of me, a middle aged guy, and I got a wrist band with 4 punches in it. 4 punches, 4 beers and that was it. Backpacks and purses were searched.
If I was 21 years old, I’m not going to waste one of my 4 meager beers giving it to an underage friend.
Now, I don’t like the police state atmosphere of the searches for a pissy little outdoor concert, and it isn’t going to stop the hardcore partiers from getting drunk prior to the event and sneaking in plastic little airplane liquor bottles in their bras and/or crotches, but I didn’t see large numbers of people pissing their pants drunk like they would have twenty-five years ago.
That’s why tailgating starts 6 hours before kickoff (at least at Maryland)
At U of Maryland, a person can only buy 2 beers at a time, which is annoying. But you are allowed to buy those 2 beers an unlimited amount of time. So you just buy two beers, stuff them into your pockets, and then turn around and buy 2 more.
In the UK, my kids school has a very relaxed attitude to alcohol. We were at the headmaster’s quiz night a few weeks ago and it was mixed pupils and parent’s teams but each table was piled high with booze and snacks. Perfectly normal.
I thought that, as part of the recent renovations, there was some sort of “club area” (i.e. the “expensive seats”) that sold beer, but apparently they changed their mind. There is a “beer garden” near the stadium, but it is outside of the stadium itself.
Also, beer was served at the Inter Milan-Real Madrid match played in Berkeley in 2014 (which I believe is the only time a sporting event has been held there but Tightwad Hill was closed off).
Well, tailgating started early at WVU as well. I remember some games that started at noon and at 6am we were outside the stadium grilling bacon and eggs and drinking Bud Light.
But then, the thing was that you knew that there was no booze being sold inside the stadium so you stuffed your pants full of as much liquor and beer that you could carry. At that time, they would search bags and purses, but not put you through a metal detector. So everyone would be nice and rip roaring drunk at kickoff and throughout the game. They allowed halftime passes to go back out of the stadium to replenish your buzz and bring more booze in.
Recently, I think in 2012 or so, they began allowing beer sales in the stadium and eliminated the halftime passes. They also installed metal detectors. From what I have heard, selling beer inside the stadium has tempered the rush to get drunk outside the stadium, as the theory goes, since you can maintain your buzz inside or get drunker, there is no reason to get blasted beforehand.
Yeah, this. If I wanted to get drunk in college it was not difficult to find alcohol. No way was I going to spend 10x as much to drink a beer during the game when I could just drink as much beer as I wanted before the game.
