Alcohol, college sports and advertising

        A poorly understood relationship exists between
alcohol and athletics. College athletes drink more
heavily than non-athletes (Nelson and Wechsler,
2001) and sports fans drink more than non-fans
(Nelson and Wechsler, 2003). The reasons for these
relationships are not known. In this section, we will
explore some possible explanations for the
relationship between alcohol and athletics, including
the heavy marketing of alcohol during sporting events.

 What's the deal with humans and sports in the first place?
        Humans are social creatures that seem to share a universal interest in sports and games (Hopkins and Wober, 1973).  Participating in sports, either actively or passively, seems to satisfy a primal need that runs far deeper than we might be aware of on a conscious level.  Humans are predators with an impressive ability to work together, strategically, to kill prey or destroy an enemy.  These abilities allowed humans to successfully ascend to the top of the food chain.  While the majority of us no longer need to engage in the same types of predatory activities that allowed us to get here, this certainly does not mean that those drives are no longer present or that they no longer come in handy from time to time.  We have simply learned to keep these drives in check and to reveal them only in situations deemed appropriate by the modern culture.  The work force represents one context in which our predatory skills are still useful and often necessary.  How many times have you heard sayings like, "making a killing", "hunting for a job", "price war", etc?
        Sports represent another avenue for acceptable, typically healthy outlets for our predatory urges.  As a team player, one is actually part of the battle.  In basketball, for instance, one is part of a team that utilizes strategy, physical prowess, endurance, accuracy of throwing, and other skills to "dominate", "beat", "destroy", "kill", "eliminate", "crush", etc., the other team. 
        Clearly, sports fans are not involved in the battle on the same level as athletes.  However, they are still part of the in-group that the athletes represent.  They can share in the excitement as their team prepares for battle, spend time strategic and debating the best plans of attack, hoot and cheer as they watch their team compete, and share in the victory celebrations or lick their wounds when the battle is over. 

Alcohol and sports
        Nelson and Wechsler (2001) observed that college athletes engage in episodic, or binge, drinking at higher rates than non-athletes.  Athletes tend to socialize more than non-athletes, place more importance on parties, have more friends that drink heavily, and watch more sports programming (see the discussion of alcohol ads and sports below).  Like college athletes, fans of collegiate sports tend to drink more heavily than non-fans (Nelson and Wechsler, 2003). 
        Why might the link between sports and alcohol exist?  One can only speculate.  For many people, alcohol seems to exert an anxyiolitic, or anti-anxiety, effect.  This effect seems to make people more comfortable interacting with others socially.  In general, intoxicated individual's are less concerned about the potential negative consequences of their actions, such as social rejection or failure.  Colloquially, many people refer to the impact of alcohol on concern over the consequences of their actions as reduced inhibitions.   
        Serious sports fans are very concerned about the well being of their teams, as are athletes.  The prospect that their team could lose can be very anxiety provoking and watching the game itself, without being able to control its progression, can be very stressful.  Alcohol might help dampen the anxiety and stress that go along with being a sports fan, thus making it more enjoyable.  By reducing one's concerns about social rejection, alcohol might also facilitate participation and bonding among fans.  
       Exposure to alcohol advertising and marketing efforts is oft cited as a potential contributor to the higher than normal levels of alcohol use among athletes and sports fans.  For instance, Nelson and Wechsler (2001; 2003) note that both athletes and sports fans watch more television than their peers, presumably including more sports related programming, in which alcohol advertisements are common.  According to the authors (Nelson and Wechsler, 2001), such ads could "prime viewers for heavy alcohol use".  However, as we will see, the impact of advertisements on alcohol use appears to be minimal at best.
       In short, a relationship exists between college athletics and alcohol, though the explanation for why this relationship exists remains elusive.  For many people, alcohol reduces anxiety and makes them more comfortable in social situations.  These effects might reduce some of the stress and anxiety that go along with rooting for one's favorite team, and might facilitate the bonding of fans in social settings.  Some have suggested that exposure to alcohol advertisements during sporting events might also contribute.  In the next section, we will examine the relationship between exposure to alcohol ads, alcohol consumption, and the use of ads during collegiate sporting events. 

Alcohol advertisements and sports  
       Alcohol advertising is pervasive in college
sporting events.  According to a recent report
in USA Today (March 15, 2004), "NCAA
tournament games led all other sports events
in alcohol-related TV advertising in 2002,
with 939 ads costing $28 million. That
compares with a combined 925 ads aired
during the Super Bowl, World Series, college
bowl games and the NFL's Monday Night
Football."   Until recently, the men's basketball
team at California State University, Fresno,
entered the court through a silver tunnel
provided by a Coor's Light distributor, and students at Northwestern were given magnetic calendars of the school's sports schedules complete with the Miller Brewing Company logo (Hawes, 1998).  Coor's even created a special can commemorating the championship football season at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln (Hawes, 1998). 
        The alcohol industry sees nothing wrong with advertising during college sporting events.  They deny that the ads promote underage alcohol use.  As quoted in ESPN.com (November 12, 2003), Jeff Becker, president of a trade association known as the Beer Institute, stated "The fact is that the vast majority of those persons that watch and attend college sports, as well as the majority of students in college, are of legal drinking age, 21 or older."   Further, many simply see advertising during college sporting events as smart marketing, given that many of those in their target market are sports fans.  Jeff Kaestner, vice president of consumer affairs for Anheuser-Busch Companies, summed it up as follows, "I think it's ethical and good business. We want to be where our customers are" (USA Today, March 15, 2004). 
          Many school officials vehemently disagree.  According to University of Miami President, Donna Shalala: 

"The time has come to sever the tie between college sports and drinking -- completely, absolutely and forever. Schools must consider voluntary guidelines that say 'No alcohol advertising on the premises of an intercollegiate athletics event, no bringing alcohol to the site of an event, no turning a blind eye to underage drinking at tailgate parties, and on campus, and no alcohol sponsorship of intercollegiate sporting events.'"                                     
                               - Donna Shalala
                                 President of University of Miami and Former
                                         US Secretary of Health and Human Services                                          (click here for the article)

      Many other officials and school representatives agree with positions like those of Donna Shalala. To them, accepting alcohol advertising money is completely inconsistent with the current focus of universities on curbing underage drinking.  Andy Gieger, the Athletics Director at Ohio State, recently stated that "It's inconsistent to say you want to discourage underage drinking and turn around and huckster the stuff on your broadcasts." Some, like Ohio State University, have banned alcohol ads from televised sporting events, despite the potential loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year (Cincinnati Post, November 22, 2003).  .  
        Dean Smith, retired basketball coach from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is also an outspoken critic of combining alcohol with college sports (see the quote from Dean Smith earlier in the page).  Smith recently leant his support to a new initiative by the Center for Science in the Public Interest to get schools to shun alcohol advertising during sporting events.  The program, called The Campaign for Alcohol-Free Sports TV, requests schools to sign a pledge indicating that the they will prohibit alcohol advertising on local sports programming, and that will work within its athletic conference and within the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) to eliminate all alcohol advertising from televised college sports.
       Interestingly, in all of the discussion surrounding alcohol advertising and college athletics, there has been very little emphasis on whether the ads actually influence college drinking!  As we will see in the next section, it appears that such ads actually have little impact on alcohol consumption overall.  While local ads promoting cheap drinks and contests do attract drinkers, these are not the types of ads that appear during televised sporting events.