The Relationship Between Responsible Drinking Policies and Football Game-Day Incidents at The Ohio State University: a Preliminary Study
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Date
2018-05
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The Ohio State University
Abstract
Studies have shown crime, misconduct, and incidents tend to increase within and around stadiums during football games, particularly, alcohol-related misconducts (Reese and Schnepel 2008, Merlo et al. 2010, Kalist and Lee 2014). 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, 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 reduction of game day incidents. Incident statistics from OSU's Department of Public Safety were examined for the 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017 OSU home football game seasons. Alcohol arrests and citations inside and outside the stadium along with stadium ejections were compared across these seasons. Additionally, game time, game duration, possession 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 between the 2014-2016 seasons. However, there was an increase in these numbers for the 2017 season, which may be due to changes in stadium alcohol policy. Within each season, incidents were highest for evening games that started 6 p.m. or later. The findings also suggest that attendance, game duration, possession time, points scored, and temperature did not appear to have significant relationship to the number of game-day incidents. This study provides initial findings showing a decrease in overall game-day incidents between the 2014-2016 seasons, 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. The rise in overall game-day incidents for 2017 may be due to changes in stadium alcohol sale policy that could restrict guests from drinking moderately inside the stadium. Causality cannot be established, however. More research will be conducted for future games evaluating trends.
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Keywords
Alcohol, Safety, Football, Buckeyes, Policy, Crime