Stadium to Limit Beer Sales at SDSU Games

Responding to concerns about increasing student rowdiness and public drunkenness, San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium’s concessionaire announced Thursday it would end concession stand sales of alcoholic beverages after the third quarter of San Diego State University football games.

The decision was made after a request by SDSU Athletic Director Fred Miller, who asked for the ban at a meeting of the stadium’s governing board Thursday morning. Miller said the drunken behavior of many in the crowd at the Sept. 20 UCLA game spurred him to seek this and other actions to control rowdiness and vandalism.

“What happened at the UCLA game highlighted the problem,” Miller said. “We don’t view this as a strictly student problem, we view it as a game management problem. We want people to come out to the games, and we want to give them the opportunity to view the game in an enjoyable environment.”

Service America Corp., the stadium’s concessionaire, agreed to discontinue the sale of beer and wine at concession stands after the third quarter but will continue to sell alcoholic beverages in the clubs on the plaza, loge and press levels. Patrons who purchase alcohol during that time will have to remain in the clubs.

Miller said the largest number of students ever to attend an SDSU football game saw the UCLA contest, more than 12,000 of the crowd of 50,338. He added that most of those students participated in tailgate parties in the parking lot before the event, prompting him to call for more restrictions, including the banning of bottles and beer kegs in the parking lot and restricting the time the lot is open before a game.

“Bottles on that asphalt parking lot pose a serious problem, and the contents of kegs, we all know, can be consumed far too fast,” Miller said. “We feel the benefits of having bottles or kegs pale in comparison to the problems they pose.”

A subcommittee of the Stadium Authority Board will be meeting in the next two weeks to discuss Miller’s suggestions.

“The subcommittee will be meeting to look at the pros and cons of banning bottles and kegs as well as closing the parking lot up until four hours to game time,” stadium business manager Steve Shushan said. “Right now, there’s not a lot of restrictions. We don’t allow people to throw objects like Frisbees and get in the way of traffic, and one hour prior to the game if people are taking up more than one space they need to vacate all the spaces but one.”

One of the problems with restricting the time the parking lot is open before the game is that people wanting to purchase San Diego Chargers tickets need access to the parking lot, Shushan and Miller agreed.

“What we’re doing is moving in an orderly procedure to bring all the entities involved to a joint decision,” Miller said. “We’re very fortunate that we’ve had this much time before our next home game (Oct. 25 against the Air Force Academy) to get all this hammered out.”