Beer and Sports

Remember the mobs of students who got out of hand following a few recent college football games? It says here that beer ads are to blame.

"Television viewers of college games are constantly subjected to messages that encourage, and even glorify, drinking as a natural part of the game. Some ads are particularly disturbing. One shows a high-energy crowd of sports fans holding beers and yelling in what nearly resembles a mob scene. It's a thin line between such beer-powered exuberance and the onset of rioting."

(It's just a matter of time before Joe Sixpacks everywhere start jumping out of their La-Z-Boys on Saturday afternoons, and maraud through town overturning police cruisers.)

The authors report the stunning news that many sports fans like to drink and that "many college bars specifically target sports fans by offering television access to a huge range of college athletic contests."

(That explains the epidemic of riots and looting in the neighborhoods surrounding the nation's thousands of sports bars that we read about every weekend. )

Since raising the drinking age, tightly restricting or banning alcohol throughout campuses, and compulsory alcohol awareness education haven't worked, it's gotta be those damn beer ads.

Or maybe it's those damn goal posts.

Comments

[Irfan Khawaja]

The article doesn't say that ads are to blame for the riots. It says that drinking is to blame, and the ads legitimize the drinking. Two unassailable truths, as far as I can see.

As for the claim that the Big Ten etc. don't sell alcohol at campus sporting events...right,
and we should therefore infer that everyone within
a 10 mile radius of a Big Ten sporting event is
perfectly sober, right? I mean, if they don't sell alcohol at the game, that must mean that it's totally unavailable. And yet, somehow, alcohol is connected with virtually every riot. Unsolved Mysteries, anyone?

[ruprecht]

They riot after soccer (futball) games in Europe and Latin America. The European/Latin American culture
of Sports violence is to blame!

We are notresponsible for our actions, someone else must be!

[Bob Hawkins]

Speaking as someone who had student tickets to Ohio State games for 8 seasons, and has a piece of a goalpost from a Michigan game...

Another factor is that rioting in certain circumstances is a tradition. The students look forward to it.

When my younger brother was still in high school, he came to Columbus for an OSU-Michigan. He bought a scalped ticket and ended up in the last seat in the first row of the bleachers. When the game was almost over, he decided to get the pylon in the corner of the end zone. He was the closest to it. The final gun went off, he sprinted for the pylon, and the crowd blew by him like he was jogging. The pylons and the goalposts were gone before he ever got close. He was an amateur, they were pros.

[Anonymous]

I guess it doesn't matter that the Big Ten, the SEC, and probably other conferences DON'T sell alcohol at campus sporting events. And I can't remember the last alcohol ad I saw on a college football telecast. But why let facts get in the way of a rant?

[Clayton E. Cramer]

Do you suppose it has a bit more to do with a generation raised in daycare, who have no idea of appropriate behavior? Wait until they are running America's corporations. Enron will seem pretty minor.

[Anonymous]

You're on to something: http://www.scrappleface.com/MT/archives/000486.html

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Thanks

[Nike Air Max kickers schoenen]

sports bars,now crazy