Whither tailgating?
OK, I completely understand the frustration of many parents and families - as well as many people in general - when it comes to having large congregations of people drinking heavily all day, as is the case with regard to Georgia football tailgating. So, I'm totally sympathetic to the concerns of University Council's Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics.
Still, what good is it going to do to create 'family-friendly' tailgating zones when all you're going to do is push those who do plan on drinking a lot further out. For that matter, let's say they go all the way and ban the open-container policy UGA currently has in an attempt to prevent drinking on campus. All this means is that people are going to go the bars prior to kickoff, or assemble at individuals' homes to party, and then go to the game.
According to UGA Police Chief Jimmy Williamson, as well as many of the committee's members, much of the complaints stem from sober individuals sitting next to drunk individuals at the game. The people who want to drink a lot are going to drink a lot, and then you'll still have to deal with them once you're in the stadium.
That, and I'm not entirely sure what parking on the sidewalks has to do with anything. Granted, it's a little annoying, but it doesn't really have anything to do with drunken behavior, does it?
And isn't the Auburn game a bad example? You put your team on a national televised game - with the SEC East title on the line - with a kickoff at 7 p.m., then you're going to have some folks who drink all day and end up quite intoxicated. Heck, I tailgated with several folks who had this happen to them.
So why not just revert back to Vince Dooley's policy of no kickoff after sundown? Say everything has to start prior to, say 5 p.m. You'll still have drunk folks, but you'll also have cut down on a solid two hours of drinking.
Still, what good is it going to do to create 'family-friendly' tailgating zones when all you're going to do is push those who do plan on drinking a lot further out. For that matter, let's say they go all the way and ban the open-container policy UGA currently has in an attempt to prevent drinking on campus. All this means is that people are going to go the bars prior to kickoff, or assemble at individuals' homes to party, and then go to the game.
According to UGA Police Chief Jimmy Williamson, as well as many of the committee's members, much of the complaints stem from sober individuals sitting next to drunk individuals at the game. The people who want to drink a lot are going to drink a lot, and then you'll still have to deal with them once you're in the stadium.
That, and I'm not entirely sure what parking on the sidewalks has to do with anything. Granted, it's a little annoying, but it doesn't really have anything to do with drunken behavior, does it?
And isn't the Auburn game a bad example? You put your team on a national televised game - with the SEC East title on the line - with a kickoff at 7 p.m., then you're going to have some folks who drink all day and end up quite intoxicated. Heck, I tailgated with several folks who had this happen to them.
So why not just revert back to Vince Dooley's policy of no kickoff after sundown? Say everything has to start prior to, say 5 p.m. You'll still have drunk folks, but you'll also have cut down on a solid two hours of drinking.
posted by Jmac at 7:04 AM
9 Comments:
Nooooooo. I like nationally televised night games. Especially in August/September when it's 100 freakin' degrees. I would much rather have a bunch of drunkards in the stands, and it be a balmy 80, than a bunch of drunkards in the stands, and it be a mind-scorching 95.
And, yes, drunkards will be drunkards. There is no law that can stop that. Besides, drinking and football go so well together.
Booo! Night games suck.
I think Johnathan's proposal is a good one.
Well, I'm not completely on board with it. I'm just saying it may cut down on the volume of really obnoxious drunk people.
I mean ... I like night games. I had a lot of fun at the Auburn tailgate (which, it must be noted, was monstrous in its scope ... lots of Low Country Boil going on and The Wife, who doesn't drink, even did a tequila shot). But, then again, I know that I'll drink just a couple of beers and not cause a scene in the stadium.
So if the intent really is to cut down on crazy drunk folks in the stadium, then this makes more sense than 'family-friendly zones.' That and bumping up the number of police in the stadium, though I imagine UGA Police is stretched mighty, mighty thin those days anyway (right Charles?).
Plus we've got bigger ambitions for tailgating 2006 ... involves the purchase of a trailer and at least one fried turkey.
(Spoiler Update: Blasphemy Below)
Upon further review, the easiest thing would be to somehow find more eligibility for David Greene and David Pollack so CBS will put all of Georgia's games on at 3:30 p.m. and further deify those two players.
Listen, I really liked Greene and Pollack too, but the lovefest the national media had with them was a bit much for me. How many times did I have to hear about them playing on the same Pee-Wee team?
Now that Brodie Croyle has left Alabama, who will CBS fall in love with?
They make everyone entering the stadium blow into a breathalyzer. HA! Or have a "drunk" section and a "sober" section. We could further section off the stadium into standing, no standing, yelling obnoxious things at players who cannot hear you at all, no yelling...
I'm sure I could come up with some more. Personally, I don't go to the games because of the heat -- it's just not fun at all. I love night games, though. Football should be played in cold weather -- I should be wearing a jacket in the stands.
I love night games, I love 12 o'clock games, I love games on TV. I love watching football with beer or bourbon in my cup.
But I also remember a time when I, too, was frustrated with football and the obnoxious ways inebriated fans acted. I thought that there had to be a better way to control the situation.
But that sort of behavior doesn't just surround football. You can find those same people acting those same stupid ways from the Stadium to the 40 Watt to the Manhattan. You can find them at frat parties and townie art viewings. I see these same people acting those same stupid ways every night between March 5th and October 25th on and around the beach down here on Island City. The only difference is raw numbers.
I've been in and around that stadium in all sections and at all kickoff times. 95% of folks are acting like grown ups. That last 5% is obnoxious, to be sure, but every time I've seen the obnoxious cross the line into dangerous the authorities (or just the folks nearest by) came down on 'em hard.
And that's the only solution, 'cause you can't punish 92,000 people acting right for the actions of some 500 widely scattered bad apples.
I'm with you Patrick because, as both Realist and I pointed out, folks who want to drink a whole lot are going to drink a whole lot. Bumping up the number of law enforcement and security personnel at the stadium would be a much better way to handle things.
Plus, I've seen so many sober people who are bothered by the obnoxious actions of a drunk individual, yet do nothing about it and sit miserably through the game. If someone is disrupting your viewing, you've got every right to inform security and have that situation taken care of.
My personal experience and the general experience of many of the people in the (UGA Police) department who have worked football games is that the late kickoff games have far more problems overall than games with earlier kickoffs. I'm sure any county officers you talk with will say the say thing about their experiences. These are not just drunk people problems, although alcohol has so vastly much a part of them. Traffic after night games stalls out much sooner due to the volume of people leaving town, creating far more instances of road rage and aggressive driving along with drunk driving. Athens is simply not designed to handle the volume of traffic it generates on these nights. Pedestrian traffic gets bad, too, forcing people who want to show their butt closer together with people who want to kick some butt.
Increasing the police in the stadium probably will not add to any greater sense of security, but will cause logistical problems. For one, there is only so much radio traffic that can be handled by the several bandwidths used during the games. For another, every officer who works a football game is somebody receiving a paycheck for that service, and our department is already tapped to capacity at each game—each additional officer then has to come from police departments throughout Georgia. We have lately been using more GBI officers, but there has developed something of a history in knowing which departments fit the situation and which don't. To be less vague, there have been cases where officers from departments more used to aggressive law enforcement overstepped constitutional or ethical boundaries in handling people in and around the stadium. So, we don't ask those departments to supply officers anymore, which means fewer places from which to draw people to be in the stadium. As well, all this traffic has to go somewhere, so local agencies have to deal with the expanding effects with what assets they have.
Fundamentally, though, increased officer presense will not decrease the problems in and around the stadium. I attribute this, based on my experiences, to exactly this: "Besides, drinking and football go so well together." The sense of entitlement and privilege the vast majority of tailgaters and stadium guests have to having their alcohol, their football, and their stupid pride creates an entire culture where arrogance and frank criminality are acceptable. I have kicked people out of the stadium who ardently believed they have the right to come to a football game, drink alcoholic beverages they illegally sneak in, show their ass to everyone around them, and continue to stay, and I ought to not only respect their right to do all of these things, but I'm an officious ass for ejecting them from the stadium. These are not isolated instances. Nor should we just think only of what happens at the stadium. The physical state of the campus after the games reveals the rot in the hearts of many of the tailgaters who come to the games to do what they call celebration, but this is not a celebration of the pageantry of a football tradition, rather of the possibility of Bacchanalia and raucous misanthropy, wasteful excess, and criminal depravity. People, during these games, have the chance to do things they otherwise would be arrested or cited for, but because of the limitations of enforcement will be able to do these things with impunity. And as much as there is the sense of 'folks nearby' coming down hard on the obnoxious, such vigilante justice is as much the brutish product of this tailgating culture as any problem it's supposed to be handling. One drunk person beating up on another because the first thinks the other is an ass should not appear to any person as a reasonable or practical way of keeping the peace.
The problem is not quantity of law enforcement, nor is the problem one of its quality. The problem is the ideology at the base of this tailgating culture, where affluent white people think they aren't criminals while breaking various laws because these special days grant them license and further privilege to do whatever they want, whether violence or property destruction.
I recognize I have strong and provocative views about these football games. But I see things most people who enjoy the games are free to walk away from, leaving the clean up of the mess they are part of to somebody else. It has never been lost on me that the large majority of tailgaters are, as I said, affluent white people and the large majority of the people who deal with the mess on campus are lower class minorities. This is one symptom of the culture. I have little patience with that culture's demand for me to oblige its indiscretions.
Certainly we can see elements this one culture of football games has in common with the larger cultures shared among us all. There are parallel ways humans behave when they are put together in groups and when almost all of them are in some stage of intoxication: I immediately know this and intimately so. Law enforcement cannot, and from my political commitments I think it should not, change these conditions producing these cultures. The kind of cultural construction necessary for positive change might, perhaps, begin with something as mundane as changing a kickoff time. I think the changes needed are much deeper and farther reaching, but too many people disagree, and too many people do not see.
Afterall, they don't have to.
Also, about the sidewalk parking: consider that during these times most of the people walking are intoxicated, and many of the people driving are intoxicated, and we see that if the people cannot walk along the sidewalk, they will push out onto the roads. This leads to traffic problems when cars cannot leave the city smoothly and health problems when cars strike various parts of peoples' bodies.
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