Alcohol Ban Pondered for SDSU Games : Violence: Security official describes student section as ‘a war zone’ for UCLA game.

Officials at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium said Friday that they might be forced to ban the sale of alcohol during college football games in the wake of fights that lasted throughout the second half of the UCLA-San Diego State game Thursday night.

Stadium Manager Bill Wilson called it “the most continuous battleground I’ve seen” in eight years on the job. Wilson said stadium and city officials may now be forced to place a ban on alcohol, at least during college football games.

The problems started in the third quarter of a game won by UCLA, 37-12, and played before a crowd of 37,333 and a national television audience. By the end of the action, San Diego police had had 52 “contacts” with fans who were facing off or fighting.

Of those, two went to County Jail, 17 were issued misdemeanor citations and many more were taken to “detox” for public drunkenness or ejected, said San Diego Police Sgt. Bob Nunley, who oversees stadium events.

“Virtually all the contacts were alcohol-related,” said Nunley, who called it “as bad as any Chargers-Raiders game, and those are usually terrible for us.”

Two of those arrested were male “streakers,” whose response to the Aztecs’ performance was a nude sprint during halftime that covered the length of the field. Nunley said a third streaker was arrested early in the third quarter.

The injured included one student who suffered severe neck pain and was treated at Sharp Memorial Hospital and released. His attacker remains in County Jail, Nunley said, on suspicion of felony battery.

Nunley said his job would be much easier with a ban on alcohol sales during Aztec games, but SDSU Athletic Director Fred Miller said Friday he wants “most of all” to avoid what he called a knee-jerk solution.

“It really isn’t the sale of beer in the stadium, as much as it is students drinking or getting drunk before the game (at tailgate parties),” Miller said. “We’ve walked this road before. Even if we shut down all the taps, some students would still find a way to drink to excess.”

Miller said that last year the university and stadium joined forces to restrict the use of kegs at tailgate parties in the parking lot. Inside the stadium, beer sales are cut off after the third quarter; each student is limited to one beer per individual purchase, and all students are asked to show identification.

“But it hasn’t solved the problem,” Miller said. “I’m frustrated, but I want only a long-term solution. So, we’re all going to put our heads together and find a way out of this.”

Wilson said the stadium’s first aid unit was kept busy throughout the night with “numerous bruises and bumps, scratches, cuts, etc.”

He ranked it among the stadium’s lowest moments, including the fistfight-marred game in 1989 between the Chargers and Philadelphia Eagles, which netted 10 arrests out of 55 police contacts.

Peter Hayes, the president of Pro-Tect Professional Services, Inc., which handles security at SDSU games, called it the worst night in the history of the stadium.

“This was worse than when UCLA came here two years ago,” Hayes said, “and we had big problems then. UCLA seems to draw everyone into a frenzy.”

Most of the fights broke out in the SDSU student sections, on the field and plaza levels on the stadium’s north side. Hayes said the “expected unruliness and pranks gave way to combativeness, with a lot of people swinging and getting hurt.

“The entire area,” he added, “was like a war zone. Our guys got pelted with food, trash, beer. . . . They were cursed at and called names, and four of (the 240 members of Hayes’ staff) told me today they were quitting, fed up. They were finished with the Aztecs forever.”

Hayes and others blamed the fracas on SDSU selling about 13,000 student tickets--available at $1 each, with the appropriate school card--in sections that have a capacity for only 8,000. Hayes said that, often, as few as 3,000 students attend Aztec home games.

Hayes advocated expulsion for students arrested for fighting, and Miller said that, although “that isn’t my decision to make,” he intends to argue for more stringent measures on the part of school administrators.

“It presents a very real problem, a serious image problem, because we are hoping to attract families,” he said. “That’s why we’ve moved our kickoffs (for most Aztec home games) from 7:30 (p.m.) to 7 to 6. We’ve tried to restrict students to their own sections, but regardless of where they occur, fights are a big turn-off.”

The series with UCLA was spearheaded by SDSU as a way of boosting Aztec attendance. It began on a home-and-home basis in 1984 and is scheduled to conclude in San Diego in 1993.

Times Staff Writer Scott Miller contributed to this report.