Best practices for sneaking alcohol into a college football game (Flashlight & A Biscuit, No. 39)
Best practices for sneaking alcohol into a college football game (Flashlight & A Biscuit, No. 39)
The crowd speaks — well, slurs — on a matter of utmost importance
Welcome to Flashlight & A Biscuit, my Southern storytelling/sports/culture/food offshoot of my work at Yahoo Sports. Thanks for reading, and if you’re new around here, why not subscribe? It’s free and all.
A few years back, I was in a parking garage on Spring Street in downtown Atlanta, pregaming for a nighttime Georgia Tech-Florida State game. Now, tailgating at Georgia Tech is a dicey business — lovely enough on campus, yes, but with all the charm of a clandestine document drop when done in a parking garage. (Something about the smell of old oil just doesn’t put you in the gametime mood.)
Anyway, my colleagues and I put down a worthy quantity of Captain Morgan’s Spiced Rum — look, this was a long time ago, shut up — in the parking lot, then made our way into the stadium. After a long wait in line, we needed to, uh, return some of the Captain Morgan’s we’d temporarily rented. At the trough, one of my drinking buddies reached into the front of his pants, pulled out a plastic baggie filled with the rest of the rum, and squeezed it into his Coke.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, extending the dregs of the probably-still-warm bag to me. “Want some?”
More recently — as in, two weeks ago — I was up in Athens, standing right underneath that scoreboard sign you see above. This was the first full-stadium football game at the University of Georgia in nearly two years, which means that literally half the student body had not yet enjoyed the true college football experience, with all that entails … and it showed.
These poor naive souls were clearly attempting to smuggle alcohol into Sanford Stadium, which is still as dry as a Tucson parking lot at noon. A noble and time-tested ideal … except for the fact that they were clearly trying to sneak the alcohol in via their stomachs. Youth is wasted on the young. Heavy emphasis on wasted.
In the interest of science — not to aid these poor wayward souls, no, not at all — I decided to crowd-source some best practices from Twitter:
One retweet later from my pal Pete Thamel, the most connected man in college football, and hundreds of burgeoning degenerates were chiming in with their alcohol migration methods. We do not endorse these tactics, and we are going to assume all individuals were of legal drinking age. All tweets are for entertainment purposes only. Et cetera, et cetera. Enjoy.
[Note: this one’s long and it’s probably going to clip in GMail and other email providers, make sure you read all the goodness all the way to the end.]
Kids make the best mules
What’s the purpose of having kids if you can’t use them as sweet-faced couriers of contraband?
Always prepare a sacrifice
As we’ll see later, preparation here is key. Not every beer is going to make it inside. Some have to give themselves up for the greater good. Their sacrifice will be remembered.
The feminine mystique
The overwhelming majority of drunken idiots in the stands at college football games are men, but when it comes to evading security, the ladies have formidable talents of their own.
The Americans with Disabilities Act was never meant for this
Some folks have decided that sneaking booze into a game is worth an express ticket to Hell.
[Got a stealthy strategic beverage move of your own? Hit the comments and share.]
I’ve made a huge mistake
Not every scheme works out exactly as planned.
Ducking the long arm of the law
The fine ladies and gentlemen of law enforcement who keep out alcohol and toss out drunkards are just doing their jobs. But that doesn’t mean you have to do it for them.
Necessity is the mother of invention
As with so much else in college, if we’d put the same effort into our studies that we put into other endeavors, we’d all be Rhodes Scholars.
The “If we pull this off we’ll live like kings” maneuver
Sometimes you gotta just shoot your shot.
Drinkin’ ain’t just for the fans
Players, bands, media, mascots … everybody can get in on the act, and usually with a lot less effort than the unwashed drunken masses.
Remember the mission
Finally, always remember: the endgame is to survive till the end of the game. Good lord:
That’s enough lessons/cautionary tales, don’t you think? Thanks for hanging. Next time we hang, I promise I won’t give you the alcohol I pulled out of my pants.
—Jay
This has been issue #39 of Flashlight & A Biscuit. Check out all the past issues right here. And if you dug this, share it with your friends. Invite others to the party, everybody’s welcome.