The Relationship Between Responsible Drinking Policies and Football Game-Day Incidents at The Ohio State University
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Date
2017-03-29
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Abstract
Studies have shown crime, misconduct, and incidents tend to increase within and around stadiums during football games, in particular, alcohol-related misconducts. Ohio Stadium, home to The Ohio State University (OSU) Buckeyes college football team, hosts 7-8 annual home football games each fall. Minimal research has been presented observing trends regarding incidents during OSU’s home football games. Furthermore, the causes for these potential trends remain unknown. It is hypothesized that responsible drinking policies, which are reflected through stadium-wide alcohol sales and a no-bag policy, are associated with a reduction of game day incidents. Incident statistics from OSU’s Department of Public Safety were examined for the 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016 OSU home football game seasons. Alcohol arrests and citations inside and out of the stadium along with stadium ejections were compared across these three seasons. Additionally, game time, attendance, points scored, and game-day temperatures were observed as potential variables influencing game-day incidents. Preliminary findings show a decrease in total alcohol incidents, total arrests, and total ejections in the last three seasons. Within each season, incidents were highest for evening games that started at 6 p.m. or later. The findings also suggest that attendance, points scored, and temperature did not appear to have a significant relationship to the number of game-day incidents. When evening games were taken out of the data, the decreasing trend in incidents still remained. This study provides initial findings showing a decrease in overall game-day incidents over three years, which may be due to responsible drinking policies. Stadium-wide alcohol sales may give guests opportunities to drink more moderately inside the stadium. Bag policy could also prevent guests from bringing alcohol into the stadium. Causality cannot be established, however. More research will be conducted for future games evaluating trends.
Description
Social and Behavioral Sciences (The Ohio State University Denman Undergraduate Research Forum)
Keywords
Safety, Football, Crime, Drinking, Policy, Alcohol