Read You Herd Me!: I'll Say It If Nobody Else Will for Free Online

airplane is a bundle of vital electrical systems. There are newspapers lying all over the place and fabric upholstery on the seats. But up until ’98, you were allowed to hold a smoldering piece of carcinogenic
fire
between your fingers at 33,000 feet if the domestic flight was longer than six hours. All the FAA and TSA regulations we have to deal with now—you can’t even bring a bottle of water onto a plane, or a 3.5-ounce stick of gel deodorant—and fifteen years ago you could pull out a lighter in 26E and blow cigarette smoke in the faces of the people on either side of you.
    Say it out loud, and it sounds insane. Today, the thought of someone smoking in a warehouse or an enormous big-box store isunfathomable. The idea of smoking in an airplane? It’s the most absurd notion in the world.
    But we don’t have to look very deeply into the sports world to find analogies. In this case, the ingredients are football, young men, and alcohol, and the mixture creates a concoction that is senseless, dangerous, and frightening.
    Start with this: a growing number of universities are now selling alcohol in their on-campus football stadiums.
    Say it out loud
.
    We’re putting charged-up young males in supercharged environments and serving them alcohol. Of the 120 Division I football programs, 21 of them sell alcohol at their games, and 11 of those stadiums are on campus.
    It doesn’t sound like much, but think about the ramifications. As we know, binge drinking is a huge concern on college campuses, and nearly a dozen of those campuses are plying their students—the ones of legal drinking age, we assume—with alcohol during games.
    College students start drinking on Thursday night. Are you telling me they can’t take a three-and-a-half-hour hiatus on Saturday afternoon?
    Say it out loud
.
    West Virginia started selling beer in its stadium in 2011, and the Associated Press reported the athletic department raised $520,000 in beer money. Is it worth it? You’re willing to take on the insurance risk and potential public-relations hit for half a million dollars? Are you aware of how much money BCS schools are making off television revenue and bowl revenue? A half-million dollars is not do-or-die money for a BCS-level athletic program.
    You have to ask yourself, what’s the purpose? Notre Dame doesn’t sell beer in the stands. Does that hurt the aura of NotreDame football? I’ve been to games across the country. I’ve been to Camp Randall at Wisconsin and the Horseshoe at Ohio State, two schools that play in a conference (the Big Ten) in which no schools, except Minnesota, sell alcohol in the regular seating areas. And you know what? Those places aren’t suffering from a lack of enthusiasm or raucous behavior due to their not selling beer in the stands. It’s still a party atmosphere, just as it is in every major college football stadium.
    We’re going to look back at this someday and say, “Wow—we were
completely
idiotic.”
    There’s also a contradiction at work: the NCAA has no rules prohibiting sales at regular season events, but it bans the sale of alcohol and alcohol-related advertising during its eighty-eight championships. Additionally, host sites must cover up alcohol advertising during events. What does that tell you? Clearly, there are apprehensions within the NCAA about the connection between alcohol and college sports. It is saying, “We’re uncomfortable about this at a high-profile event, but we can’t do a whole lot if you want to sell it on campus.”
    We hear the same arguments every time the topic is raised. People are already drinking before and after games, so what’s the difference? The undercurrent to that argument is this: Why shouldn’t colleges reap some of the profits from what everyone knows is already happening?
    A lot of people smoke in America, too. Does that mean we should encourage it, or not make an attempt to lessen it?
    Another argument: college football and drinking have become