(Written by kencraw)

I spent a fair amount of time commenting on this in yesterday’s podcast, but I thought this was a topic worth expounding on further.

As long as I’ve gone to Cal games, 1999 was my first season, there has always been no alcohol sold at Cal games. Frankly, being someone who doesn’t drink a whole lot, I never thought much about it. This is not to say that I’m anti-alcohol, I’m Catholic not Fundamentalist after all. While it’s not exactly something to brag about amongst drinkers, it’s a tradition in my house to buy a new type of beer to drink on New Years day while I watch the Rose Bowl. So I’m not even against mixing alcohol and football in the privacy of one’s home.

But Saturday there was beer for sale at the game at Candlestick and it got me to thinking: I’m very glad it’s not for sale at Cal home games. There was a different vibe to the crowd. There were more “boisterous” people, people who were there seemingly with the purpose of engaging and annoying others. They swore like sailors, despite the fact that there were 2 kids ages 6 and 8 within 10 feet of them. While it was most definitely tolerable, I would still have brought the kids even having known those bozos were going to be there, it was not as pleasant as the average Cal gameday experience.

It had always been my understanding that the no-alcohol rule was a Pac-10 rule, but research this morning has proven otherwise. USC had alcohol for sale to the general public through 2004, banning it for the 2005 season as fan behavior deteriorated. Notable in the article was that the pressure banning it did NOT come from either the Pac-10 or the NCAA.

However, since 2005, no Pac-10 and now no Pac-12 team has allowed alcohol for sale to the general public. We’re not alone. As more and more schools have had to deal with alcohol related problems, they’ve taken to banning alcohol at the games as a way to control this. Alcohol is banned at all football games on CSU campuses, by executive order from the CSU chancellor starting with the 2006 season. A voluntary 2003 survey of 77 campuses showed only 26% of schools sold alcohol during games. For the most part, it seems that these tactics are working.

But what I found troubling during research this morning was that there seems to be a movement to start reintroducing alcohol for sale to the general public at games in the Pac-12. As if this should be a surprise, one of the main motives is money. They’ve seen how much money they make selling it to donors in either the suites or in adjacent to the stadium facilities (ASU, both Oregon schools, both Washington schools and starting this year Cal, all either sell or give-away alcohol to the high-end donors). They’d like to expand that revenue opportunity.

I think this is a big mistake.

I’m no fool. I know that lots of people sneak in alcohol. I know lots of people get loaded up before the game, hoping the buzz will last through the game. My wife and I had the unfortunate experience in either 1999 or 2001 of sitting in front of a recent Cal grad at the Big Game in the old Stanford stadium who was VERY liquored up when he sat behind us and thought it was the funniest thing to yell out (assumably to the Stanford team on the field) “your mom eats kitty litter!” Around the mid-2nd quarter the alcohol induced stupor set-in and during half time he puked all over the place, with the splatter getting all over my wife.

So I understand that the alcohol ban does not stop people from drinking or being drunk. But forcing it “underground” has numerous positive effects. People don’t feel as comfortable “acting drunk”. Sneaking it in is hard enough that for those who just have to drink, it’s too risky to to rely on it as one’s means for drinking. Alternatively it takes a lot of planning to be drunk enough before the game so that it’ll last through the game but not so drunk that you don’t make it to the game. This is particularly true in Berkeley where the travel time to the stadium and lack of tailgating make it hard to consume copious amounts of alcohol close to game time. As a result, I’ve found that the few people I’ve identified as drunk are usually mellowing out by the 2nd quarter or are being very careful about sneaking and concealing it.

But even those instances are rare. I think the no-alcohol environment leads to a self-selecting, weeding out process where people who list getting drunk as a key attribute to going to a football game, eventually choose to go elsewhere for their football. It’s just not fun to have to plan and work so hard to get drunk. Why do that when you can go to pro-football games and get drunk with ease? As such, in 12 seasons of Cal football I only have that one ‘kitty-litter’ story to tell until the game at Candlestick. The only fan issues I’ve ever dealt with, and they are very few and far between, relate to the cramped spaces at Memorial (people stepping on each other trying to get in and out of rows, people elbowing or accidentally punching people when jumping up to cheer, the 2009 USC game concourse debacle, etc.).

And frankly, I like it that way (well, more space would be nice too).

Let’s keep Cal football the amazingly family friendly environment it has always been. I don’t mind the beer for sale at the fun zone. I don’t mind the beer and wine for sale for the big time donors. That amount of beer isn’t going to result in the sorts of bozos I had to tolerate on Saturday. But sadly, despite being a very small percentage of the overall crowd base, these bozos have the potential to cause discomfort and irritation to people in a 30-seat radius of their belligerent antics.

I’d much rather continue to enjoy football games in Berkeley without them, even if that means the rest of us have to go without an otherwise enjoyable beer or two during the game.