Beer, fights and bad behavior: Are college football fans getting too rowdy?
Source: 11 Alive
Kyle Iboshi
October 28, 2017
Warning: Some videos contain profanity
Tailgating with a few beers before a college football game is tradition, but security officials fear the drunken rowdiness among fans has reached new depths.
Early in the 2017 season, several fights among fans broke out at college football games. Videos posted online show a scuffle at the Florida State-Alabama game, a fight during the Michigan-Florida game and punches were thrown in the stands at the Ole Miss-South Alabama Game.
To find out the extent of the problem, KGW requested stadium security records from every major college football program.
Inside the numbers
The records show at least 3,778 fans were ejected during the 2016 football season and 1,102 fans were arrested.
Based on the records provided, the University of South Carolina had the highest fan ejection rate in the country, followed by Wisconsin, Oregon, Oregon State and Nebraska.
That doesn’t necessarily mean those schools had the rowdiest fans. Comparisons are difficult because stadiums have varying policies on dealing with unruly fans. Not all colleges keep records on arrests or ejections.
Of the 128 Football Bowl Subdivision programs that KGW requested data from, 122 responded but not all provided data. Sixty-eight provided arrest numbers and 66 provided ejection numbers.
Most of the misconduct involved alcohol.
“You couple alcohol with the upped emotions, the intensity, screaming and yelling and you have some potential for issues,” explained Brian Baxter, sports psychologist and director of the Sport Psychology Institute Northwest.
At the University of Oregon, 139 of the 183 fan ejections last season were for alcohol violations.
Across the country, stadium security kicked out thousands of college football fans for illegal consumption or public drunkenness.
For example, during a Nov. 19, 2016 game at the University of Washington, police ejected one student after he was “found with cans of Bud Light in the stands.” Another fan had to leave after vomiting in the stadium. A 19-year old was found laying on the women’s restroom floor. She had defecated in her pants and was transported for detox.
Fans were also ejected for other misconduct. Arizona State kicked out seven fans from a home game on Oct. 22, 2016. Reports show one fan was ejected because of assault. Another fan was booted because of a fight. One person had to leave because he grabbed a woman.