Stacy Innerst, Post-Gazette Click photo for larger image. This is the second of two reports on alcohol and sports. Yesterday: A jury verdict prompts some professional sports venues to curb beer sales Today: Some critics want college sports officials to rethink the long and lucrative relationship with beer advertisers.

The equation is as common as it is embarrassing -- a big college game coupled with $1 beer specials at sports bars ignites a celebration that spills into the streets for the overturning of cars and the torching of couches.

It happened in Morgantown during the NCAA basketball tournament, and West Virginia University officials acknowledge that alcohol helped fuel the misconduct.

"It probably played a large role," said Ken Gray, West Virginia's vice president for student affairs. "It's a challenge for all of us to figure out how to prevent these things from happening in the future.

"Lots of fans celebrated, but a small group did so irresponsibly, setting fires and doing other destructive things. The spotlight should be on the team, not on the few people who are doing destructive things."

West Virginia is hardly the only school where sports fanaticism and youthful indiscretion blends with alcohol and leads to spontaneous combustion. In February, 14 people were arrested and a student was shot in the face with a police pepper ball after University of Maryland fans celebrated a win against Duke.

Last April, when the University of Connecticut won the NCAA men's basketball title, 35 people were arrested after fans started fires and overturned cars. Administrators at the schools competing tonight for the national title are nervously hoping that there won't be a repeat on their campuses.

"They don't turn over cars and set them on fire or burn their couches and break store windows if they were sober," said George Hacker, alcohol policies director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Ohio State University created a task force on preventing celebratory riots in 2002 after experiencing 19 riots or disturbances in six years. The "celebrations" often were associated with sporting events, almost always included a high volume of alcohol consumption and were an embarrassment to 88 percent of the student body polled.

The NCAA also convened a summit on sportsmanship and fan behavior in 2003, with alcohol cited as a frequent catalyst for out-of-bounds behavior. The general consensus is that no campus can escape the issue.

On April 28, the board of directors for the NCAA's Division I schools will review all alcohol policies -- from beer ads for televised events to direct sponsorships to the sales of beer in stadiums and arenas at the local, conference and national levels.

Robert Hemenway, the chancellor at Kansas University and chairman of the board of Division I directors, doesn't expect any formal action at the meeting and conceded the overall issue is a complicated one because tournament games are usually at off-campus facilities. But he strongly believes that beer should not be sold at college games.

"I don't know of any president or chancellor who thinks selling beer at an intercollegiate athletic event is a good idea," Hemenway said.

At Pitt, alcohol is not sold at the Petersen Events Center but it can be brought in by those who have luxury boxes. For football games at Heinz Field, beer is not sold except in the premium seating areas. At the Carrier Dome in Syracuse, beer is sold during football and basketball games.

Tim Delaney, chief of police on the Pitt campus, said a city ordinance that bans open containers acts as a deterrent when it comes to student drinking. And police address incoming students to inform them of the rules on accepted behavior.

"You try to teach responsibility and where the lines are. I call it straight talk," Delaney said.

When the NCAA tournament came to Pittsburgh four years ago, Delaney recalled that one couch was set on fire after a Pitt win.

"The kids put it out themselves," Delaney said. "I've heard students from other schools call it a tradition. But setting a fire isn't a rite of passage. It's arson."

Ads for beer are receiving a lot of attention, particularly with the climax of the NCAA basketball tournament tonight. According to the Campaign for Alcohol-Free Sports TV, the makers of alcoholic beverages spend $58 million annually on commercials during college sports programs. Of that, $28 million is spent on ads during the NCAA basketball tournament, which has more beer ads than the Super Bowl, World Series, Monday Night Football and college football bowl games combined.

Last month, U.S. Rep. Tom Osborne (R-Neb.), a former football coach at Nebraska University, introduced a non-binding resolution in the House to eliminate alcohol ads during radio and TV broadcasts of college sports events. He introduced a similar resolution last year.

Osborne pointed out that the ad policy in the Division I manual is designed to exclude commercials that are not in the best interests of higher education. Yet alcohol is the leading health issue on college campuses, resulting in 1,400 deaths per year from binge drinking.

"I think there's a feeling of hypocrisy about the policy," Osborne said. "I just think the mission of the university is to educate and create sound values. Alcohol doesn't belong in that mix."

Among the supporters of the resolution is Penn State football coach Joe Paterno.

Whether it comes to a vote or not is another matter. Osborne said 380 of his congressional colleagues receive an average of $11,000 a year in campaign contributions from the alcohol lobby.

"You realize what you're fighting," he said. "But I think there is a growing awareness."

Those who study the issue say administrators are caught between principle and profit.

"Alcohol is the oxygen of college sports," said Murray Sperber, a retired professor at Indiana University and author of "Beer and Circus," a book about the connection between alcohol and college athletics.

"The system could not breathe without the money from beer ads on the broadcast of games, and the NCAA and the colleges embrace the money even though binge drinking is at epidemic proportions on many campuses," he said.

Pioneering research on the relationship between alcohol abuse on college campuses, including its relationship with athletics, was done by Dr. Henry Wechsler of the Harvard School of Public Health.

He titled his research on binge drinking "Dying to Drink" and decried the marriage of drinking and college sports through sponsorships.

"Sports is mired in an ocean of alcohol. It's cheaper to get drunk than go to the movies. It's cheaper to buy beer than water," Wechsler said. "You're never going to get college students not to drink, but you can decrease how much they drink. We're throwing it at them. We don't need to throw it at them. The first thing colleges need to do is divest themselves of being sponsored by alcohol producers."

One death by binge drinking occurred in September at Colorado State University. Samantha Spady, a 19-year-old sophomore, posted a message on the Internet about her intention to drink heavily.

"I'm also going to get extremely wasted this weekend, not just because it's Labor Day, but because Colorado State plays Colorado in football tomorrow," she typed.

Spady didn't make it to the game but watched it on TV, and she apparently drank herself to death. She was found dead Sept. 5 in the Sigma Pi fraternity house with a blood alcohol content of 0.43, more than five times the legal limit for driving.

Attempts at changing the campus culture, including curbs on tailgating, are often met with resistance.

When Michigan State announced in 1998 that it was banning alcohol at what was a traditional tailgating site, police in riot gear had to use tear gas to quell a riot by several hundred students who lit fires in protest.