I Liked You Better When I Was Drinking

So the administration is beginning to entertain some kind of policy where every student will have to pay between $5 and $20 per semester for admission into sports events whether they go or not. This is because the administration is afraid attendance of athletic events is declining.

First they give every student a laptop computer and tell them to load up on all the porn and video games they want. Now they wonder why they don't go to athletic events.

Here's what to do: make the fee $100 per semester and open the bar. Yes, that's right -- as much free booze as you can drink at every athletic event.

I'm dreaming of course, this administration has this New Puritan policy which makes taboo any drinking at all. The new Berry Events Center is alcohol-free!@#! And they wonder why we don't go?

For one full academic year the North Wind had weekly front-page stories on the continuing threat of binge drinking and college. In all the stories the North Wind reporter felt the need to point out that binge drinking was defined as having something on the order of more than five alcoholic beverages in an academic year. Then there's the weenie ass way they define an alcoholic beverage as one 12 ounce beer (not the good beer like Guiness but crap beer like Bud Light) or one 6oz. glass of wine or one tiny little 1/2 oz. shot of booze (not real 96 proof booze like Evan Williams or Elijah Craig but weak stuff like Old Crow.)

Given those parameters, I have more than five alcoholic beverages before my ten o'clock.

Hell, a lotta nights I SPILL more than five alcoholic beverages.

But no, they are concerned that athletic attendance is on the decline. Well, athletic attendance nationwide is declining. I think the greed of the athletes, sports teams and institutions have turned a lot of people off to the idea of athletics. Now we also have this "new sobriety." In colleges across the country, administrations are beginning to think that the point of the sports contest is to marvel at the sheer athletic achievement.

Hint to the administration: When we said that, we were lying.

We go to athletic events for the same reason we go to the bar: to catch a buzz and maybe see someone get their ass kicked. We don't really relish seeing someone is 100 times as in the shape as we will ever be exhibiting feats of strength and agility that we will never get near in our lifetime. That is just not part of human nature.

Then there is the fact that if you have an IQ in three digits, sports are really dumb when you are sober.

Maybe the Internet and cable are partly to blame. It seems rather provincial to take any interest in some fourth-rate campus team in some uncomfortable bleacher when we can see the best athletes in the whole world in the comfort of our own room. If we must take an interest in local events - we can check out the scores on the web.

This University -- like most universities in the country -- have a great deal invested in athletics. For many decades, the way to get students interested in the university and keep them interested in the university after they have graduated (and can join the university's alumni association) was to turn them into fans of the university's athletic teams. Athletics were a way for the university to reach out to people in the community in hopes that they would become financial supporters of the university.

Considering the decline in interest in athletics, a wise university administration will find a new way to reach out to future alumni in a way that will keep them involved with the university after they have graduated - not extort students into paying admission to watch the beating of a dead horse.

Now, if you'll excuse me - I only have 45 minutes to get drunk before Regis's game show comes on.