The first Ohio State/Michigan game that I ever attended will always hold a special place in my heart for a few reasons.
First, it was a do-or-die kind of contest at the end of a disappointing 2004 season that created a very particular atmosphere of panic and chaos unmatched in the several The Games I've attended since. Second, we kicked the absolute crap out of a Michigan team that was supposed to steamroll over a very young Ohio State squad led by a converted third string running back named Troy Smith. Third, I had a very entertaining interaction with possibly the drunkest person I've ever seen in my entire life.
I don't drink a lot. Of alcohol. Water, almond-based milk substitutes, every flavor of soda at Burger King mixed into a big cup, yeah, I'll drink a ton of that. But beer and liquor has never been a big part of my life, which is in general probably a good thing. On the other hand I've never reached the level of nirvana that one blindingly drunk Ohio State fan did in late November of 2004.
I watched this dude stagger up through the aisles of Block O and plop himself down right in the middle of the stairs, where from his pocket flask he toasted the Buckeyes and the Wolverines with a stream of completely unintelligible nonsense for a full hour, before passing out where he sat for the next hour or so. He stayed there, unmoving, unaware of the 104,000 people around him, until about five minutes left in the fourth quarter where he roused from his slumber to ask me what the score was. After I screamed WE'RE GONNA WIN at him, he raised both fists to the air in triumph, let out a hilariously weak "Yeeeeaaahhh" and then snuggled up to his chosen handrail like it was made out of the softest cashmere as he drifted sweetly back to sleep.
I'll probably never get it. I'm a pretty strong advocate of enjoying Ohio State football in a completely unaltered state, but I know many people who have never attended or watched a Buckeye game in their adult lives without at least a few extremely low-quality American ales in their system.
To me it's crazy to think that I might miss a Troy Smith or a Braxton Miller or a Zeke Elliott doing something insane because I got just a little too lit, but on the other hand I understand why someone might look at me starting intently at the field in full Buddha mode and wonder what the hell my problem is. Either way though, Ohio Stadium is big enough for the both of us, and really my only negative experiences as a fan involve people who seem to be irritated at the insinuation that you should cheer or stand or have fun while watching football.
What's beautiful about Ohio State jumping on the alcohol sales bandwagon (as reported yesterday by Eric) is that I don't think that it changes that metric at all. However, as Bleacher Report points out, not everyone agrees:
The biggest concern is the distribution of alcohol at a sporting event where a sizable portion of the crowd is underage. Although beer still can't be sold to anyone under 21, West Virginia University President E. Gordon Gee told Marc Tracy of the New York Times last October he's had an internal debate about the issue since the school started allowing beer sales.
"I'm sometimes conflicted about it," he said, "because I do believe one of the main issues confronting universities is alcohol abuse—binge drinking."
Gee's right in that binge drinking is a gigantic issue in colleges. My otherworldly friend back in 2004 had gone well beyond having a good time and was somewhere in orbit by the time the last whistle blew. This is neither healthy nor advisable, and Gee's concern is not some nanny-state handwringing; not in a society that watches almost 2000 college students die every year from alcohol-related accidents.
My argument is that doesn't change the fact that students have been drinking in Ohio Stadium since it was built, sometimes to excess, but not in spite of or because of the stadium policies about alcohol.
Students will drink. By selling alcohol at games, schools can influence how this happens in a more positive way than many might think.
The University of Minnesota's experiences with bringing in alcohol sales to their stadium might be instructive. Their cumulative profit from beer sales at TCF Bank Stadium have been mostly negligible, but what's interesting is that the number of alcohol-related incidents stayed pretty much the same through the first few years since it was instituted, as reported in this Star-Tribune article from 2014:
After a two-year experiment, university officials found "no significant increase" in alcohol-related incidents at TCF Bank Stadium, according to a report this week to the Board of Regents. In fact, there were fewer police calls about rowdy or drunken fans in 2013 than in 2010, two years before the on-site beer and wine sales began.
"It really has not been the problem that some might have expected it would be," Vice President Pamela Wheelock said.
Similar results have been shown at places like University of Louisiana at Lafayette and SMU, in the sense that both profits and incidents have been fairly low. Also helping Ohio State's cause is that they can implement the same standards that other schools have in selling alcohol; cutting off sales after a certain point, enforcing the right to refuse to sell to anyone who seems to have had too many, putting a limit on sales, and so on.
It is completely understandable that colleges and universities would be wary about officially supplying their students alcohol in a charged environment. But what these schools are doing is simply acknowledging the reality that alcohol is a part of college football, whether they like it or not. Furthermore, students aren't likely to be spending the 25-35 dollars needed to get a buzz going during a football game, so if the 50 large that Ohio State is dropping on a drinking study doesn't ease their conscience, they can hopefully be comforted by the fact that students are gonna get lit with or without their approval, and have been since the dawn of time.
That drunken cherub that I met way back in 2004 was not in any way aided by Ohio State to get as completely shitty as he did. He drank an insane amount of alcohol entirely on his own.
As the clock ticked down to zero and we got ready to rush the field, I looked around for him, because I was afraid that in the ensuing near-riot that he'd get trampled on. I couldn't find the dude, so either he removed himself, or someone did it for him (the more likely scenario). I still wonder from time to time how the rest of his day turned out, and if he ended up being okay.
The truth is that drinking can be dangerous, and binge drinking is even worse. It's an issue that we need to confront in a major way (particularly in the Midwest), borne from our unhealthy relationship with booze on a societal level. Hoping that people will abstain won't help change that. Showing that you can enjoy alcohol responsibly at a place like Ohio Stadium might.
