Admittedly, selling beer at college football games, as the growing trend is this season, will probably reduce the number of alcohol-related fights and other problems in the stands. That’s because at the same time universities are beginning to sell hard drinks, they’re restricting ways that fans have long used to sneak it in. That includes not letting people leave at halftime, where they would get liquored up and then come back for the final two quarters.
As a graduate of a Southeastern Conference school, I’m not naïve to the fact that alcohol has always been a part of the gameday experience even though it was officially not allowed on most campuses. My days in the student section were spent next to many obnoxious yellers and stumbling sorority girls. Many also drink while tailgating before the game, leaving them nice and rowdy by the time kickoff comes around, and alcohol has long been allowed for the well-heeled and influential in the luxury boxes inside the stadium but not for the plebeians in the bleachers.
But many have lifted those restrictions this season, including Southern Miss, Ole Miss and my alma mater, Tennessee. I suppose it’s a sign of the times that universities get in on the financial action themselves when their customers have already been imbibing spirits purchased elsewhere.
But I don’t like it.
For one thing, I hate being around drunks. I don’t like the smell. I don’t like belligerent loudmouths. I don’t like children to be influenced by that behavior. I’ve never drank myself, and I think my life has been much happier because of it.
And on a philosophical level, I don’t like that institutions allegedly dedicated to the higher brain functions are sinking to the lowest levels instead as they place money above the mind.
The purpose of universities should be to elevate the understanding and knowledge of mankind. Because of their intellectual contributions, humanity has made remarkable strides over the past few centuries in agriculture, science, the arts, business and many more fields.
But now rather than being defined by their educational standards, colleges today are scored by how well their football teams perform. And success in NCAA football almost demands corruption.
It starts with recruiting athletically talented young men, usually from impoverished backgrounds, by giving them free food, lodging and perks for four years – and sometimes more than that under the table.
Oh, yeah, they’ve got to at least pretend to go to class, too. But there are ways to mitigate that problem for universities. Steer them to the easiest majors that require little academic discipline. Find a few professors willing to give them good grades. Pay tutors to work endlessly with them. Then drop them back off at the projects once their sports eligibility runs out.
What a legacy for so-called institutions of higher learning!
I’m so fed up with that crooked system that I’ve severely curtailed how much I follow college football. It’s a bore anyway that for three months otherwise normal people can talk about nothing else than what their team has been doing. I’m happier spending more time dedicated to worthwhile pursuits related to family, faith and career than investing my emotional well-being into which group of barbarians is able to smash the other side more thoroughly on a Saturday afternoon in front of a congregation of pagan worshippers, driven into even more of a frenzy now by the university-sanctioned soma.
My hope is one day that the thinking people will carry the day at our universities, and they’ll end all this silliness, letting private clubs run the sports teams, like is already done in Europe, while leaving the colleges to focus on the task of education.
Until then, I invite you to join me in abstaining – not from alcohol, although that would be wise as well – but from college football. You won’t regret it.
Reach Editor and Publisher Charlie Smith at (601) 736-2611.
