Binge Drinking In College

When I thinking of sports of alcohol the 1st thing that comes to mind is tailing gating in the parking lot before a big sporting event or some type of pregame for a party or event. the Being in College I know that Alcohol and sporting events go hand and hand and according to ABC news study finds that one in 12 people are drunk at a major sporting event. People under the age of 35 were eight times more likely to be legally drunk than other attendee. According to the addiction center “Approximately 2 out of every 5 college students of all ages (more than 40 percent) reported binge drinking at least once in the 2 weeks prior”. Even though drinking has before social or sporting events have pretty much become a ritual on college campuses and during

certain events, there are still many negative impacts such more than 690,000 are assaulted by another student who has been drinking and about 25 percent report academic consequence of their drinking. After taking the time to read this article, it identifies four key themes in which sports and alcohol come together that some people might not always take into consideration. These themes are a commercial economy, social practice and cultural identities, crime and violence and health behaviors.
The 1st theme focuses on finical links between sport and alcohol, in the United States alone, of the approximately $1 billion spent on alcohol advertising 60% of it supports sports programming”. The 2nd theme that was developed in this article explores the role that alcohol has in creating particular cultural identities in sports. Wenner and Jackson (2009) write:” both beer and sports are masculine centered social products that have far reaching consequences for gender relations and identifies across the globe.” I strongly feel that this isn’t something that simply takes in the US, but like the article stated this takes place worldwide. The 3rd theme which is cultural identities in which images of men and manhood are presented and communicated through the visual cache of commodity culture. Last, but not least is also most important in my opinion is the relationship between alcohol, sport and violence is well documented and discusses how all 3 of these things go hand and hand. “During the 2006 World cup held in Germany, UK home office date reported a 31% rise in domestic violence reports on the day of England’s 1-0 victory”.
This was a very in dept. article and really touches based on a lot of sports-associated drinking and the issues that it happens to raise for the sociology of sport more broadly.