Elsevier

Addictive Behaviors

Volume 32, Issue 11, November 2007, Pages 2681-2693
Addictive Behaviors

Hook 'em horns and heavy drinking: Alcohol use and collegiate sports

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2007.06.020Get rights and content

Abstract

Heavy alcohol consumption has been associated with collegiate sporting events, but little is known about specific levels of consumption over the course of an entire sports season. Ongoing web-based daily monitoring at the University of Texas at Austin allowed assessment of drinking levels of students (n = 541) over two full football seasons. High-profile football game days were among the heaviest days for alcohol consumption, comparable to consumption on other well-known drinking days such as New Years Eve and Halloween weekend. Men increased their drinking for all games, and women with greater social involvement were more likely to drink heavily during away games. Among lighter drinkers, away games were associated with a greater likelihood of behavioral risks as intoxication increased.

Introduction

Emerging adult college students are among the heaviest drinking demographic groups in the United States. Those who attend college consume considerably more alcohol than their non-college peers (Johnston, O'Malley, Bachman, & Schulenberg, 2005), and they experience high rates of negative consequences associated with excessive alcohol use (Wechsler et al., 2002). Although examination of typical and peak consumption patterns can shed light on general patterns of college drinking, traditional assessments of alcohol consumption such as Quantity/Frequency indices (e.g., the Daily Drinking Questionnaire; Collins, Parks, & Marlatt, 1985) have significant limitations (e.g., Neal et al., 2006). Such assessments require students to rely on heuristically-based estimates of “typical” consumption patterns, and are therefore unlikely to capture drinking episodes that are outside of individuals' normative consumption patterns.

Recent evidence suggests that collegiate drinking, and heavy drinking in particular, is often associated with specific social or recreational events within the college environment. Although these events may represent college students' heaviest drinking occasions, they are likely to be excluded by traditional quantity/frequency assessments of alcohol use. Thus, the identification of events that promote heavy drinking, the degree to which alcohol use increases in conjunction with these events, and factors that influence drinking during these events, has become a recent focus of empirical research. For example, although it has widely been considered a period of sustained heavy drinking for many students, only recently has drinking on Spring Break been empirically documented as a specific heavy drinking context (Lee et al., 2006, Smeaton et al., 1998). Likewise, Halloween (Miller, Jasper, & Hill, 1993) has been associated with increased rates of alcohol consumption, and recent investigations have documented heavy drinking practices on college students' twenty-first birthdays (Neighbors et al., 2006, Neighbors et al., 2005). Another drinking context, which is particularly relevant to a wide range of campuses across the country, is university-related sporting events.

Whereas other heavy drinking contexts occur only once a year (Spring Break, Halloween) or once in a lifetime (twenty-first birthday), sporting events occur on a weekly basis throughout the academic year. Students who self-identify as sports fans endorse higher rates of heavy drinking compared to other students (Nelson & Wechsler, 2001), yet there exists only limited empirical evidence to suggest that heavy drinking occurs on days on which college sports teams play games. Many college students view campus sporting events as an opportunity for heavy drinking, both to celebrate important victories as well as to express solidarity and enhance group cohesion with fellow students (Rabow & Duncan-Schill, 1995). This latter finding emphasizes the fact that heavy drinking associated with sporting events may be linked both to the athletic event itself, as well as to the social context associated with the athletic event. Games days, like spring break, are viewed as “party days,” in which a more disinhibited social atmosphere is likely to lead to increased alcohol use as well as other behavioral risks. As such, a large percentage of alcohol-related violations occur on college game days (Coons, Howard-Hamilton, & Waryold, 1995) which can be reduced by limiting the supply of alcohol (Bormann & Stone, 2001).

Only two studies have examined the rate of alcohol use associated with specific sporting events. Large increases in alcohol consumption were observed on the days of the semi-finals and finals of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Final Four basketball tournament (Neal, Sugarman, Hustad, Caska, & Carey, 2005). Over 60% of the sample reported alcohol consumption on each game day, and among those who drank, average consumption on the Saturday semi-final game was 8.2 (SD = 5.5) drinks and average consumption on the Monday final game was 6.9 (SD = 4.8) drinks. For comparative purposes, on a typical Saturday only 45% of the sample consumed alcohol, and average consumption was 3.2 drinks. Additionally, both lower levels of impulse control and a wider range of drinking motives were associated with increased drinking on these occasions.

A second study examined rates of alcohol consumption relative to misperception of social norms associated with “tailgating” for college football games (Neighbors et al., 2006). Over 75% of students reported drinking alcohol while tailgating, consuming an average of 3.8 (SD = 2.8) drinks. In general, heavier drinkers were more likely to drink, and drink heavily, when tailgating, and those students who overestimated how much their peers were drinking were also likely to consume greater quantities of alcohol. The authors of this study did not, however, compare rates of drinking during tailgating to rates of drinking in other contexts.

Preliminary data suggest a strong link between specific campus sporting events and collegiate alcohol consumption, but there has been no study of drinking patterns across the duration of an entire sports season. Furthermore, no research exists on the link between sports-related drinking and alcohol-related behavioral risks, that is, whether drinking on game days leads to increased risk of negative behavioral outcomes due to intoxication. Such a potential link is critical, in that the environmental cues and social demands associated with football game days may enhance the association between alcohol intoxication and risk-taking. Finally, only social norms (Neighbors et al., 2006), impulse control, and drinking motives (Neal et al., 2005) have been demonstrated as significant predictors of game day drinking, despite the fact that the social nature of sports-related drinking is endorsed by students as a primary reason for alcohol consumption (Rabow & Duncan-Schill, 1995).

Thus, the goal of this study was to address these two deficits in the literature on sports-related drinking. First, we provide data regarding consumption levels and behavioral risks over the course of two collegiate football seasons at The University of Texas at Austin (UT). These analyses clarify the general patterns of alcohol use on college game days relative to non-game days at a university where collegiate football is at the center of students' lives, and the shouts of “hook 'em horns” are immediately recognized as a symbol of support for the Texas Longhorns football team. Second, we examine theoretically-relevant predictors of game-day drinking. In particular, we test average consumption (i.e., how much a person typically drinks) and social involvement (i.e., amount of time typically spent with friends) as predictors of game-day drinking. Analyses of average consumption allow a test of whether only heavier drinkers are engaging in heavy drinking during football games, or whether football games serve as a catalyst for heavier drinking across the entire student population. Analyses of social involvement tests whether more socially engaged individuals use sporting events as a context for heavy drinking with friends. These two variables are then used to predict the occurrence of behavioral risks after controlling for event-specific drinking.

We tested the following hypotheses: (1) alcohol consumption on football game days will be greater than consumption on non-game Saturdays; (2) heavier drinkers (relative to lighter drinkers) and individuals with high social involvement (relative to those with low social involvement) will demonstrate significantly greater increases in drinking on football game days; (3) sporting events will serve as a moderator of the association between alcohol consumption and behavioral risks; in particular, football game days will be associated with a greater likelihood of behavioral risks as intoxication increases relative to non-game days; and (4) football game days will serve as a moderator of the association between alcohol consumption, social involvement, and behavioral risks, such that those individuals with high social involvement will experience higher rates of behavioral risks when intoxicated on game days.

Section snippets

Participant recruitment and sample composition

Data for this study were taken from an ongoing longitudinal research project at UT (The UT Experience!) that is examining alcohol use and behavioral risks from the end of high school through the four years of college. More details regarding this protocol can be found in Neal and Fromme (2007) and Neal, Corbin, and Fromme (2006). Participants (n = 2247) were eligible to participate if they were first-time freshmen, unmarried, and between the ages of 17 and 19. Participants completed web-based

Descriptive drinking data

Descriptive statistics for alcohol consumption were computed for each day of the week, excluding days on which football games were played. Means for Friday drinking were 1.8 (SD = 3.4) drinks during the freshman year and 2.1 (SD = 3.6) drinks during the sophomore year, with 36.1% and 37.3%, respectively, reporting drinking on these days. Means for Saturday drinking were 1.6 (SD = 3.2) drinks during the freshman year and 1.8 (SD = 3.4) drinks during the sophomore year, with 32.7% and 33.7%,

Discussion

The goals of this study were to examine alcohol consumption and behavioral risks on football game days, as well as to test whether average alcohol consumption and social involvement predicted increases in both alcohol consumption and the likelihood of behavioral risks on football game days. Results consistently indicated elevated rates of alcohol consumption for both home and away football games, and average consumption and social involvement served to predict increased consumption.

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by grants from the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (R01-AA01397 & 5T32-AA07471). The authors would like to thank Will Corbin, Ph.D., Marc Kruse, M.A., Amee Patel, M.A., Reagan Wetherill, M.A., Cynthia A. Stappenbeck, M.A., Heather Brister, B.S., Jennifer Irlbacher, B.S., the many undergraduate research assistants who contributed to this research, and DatStat Corporation.

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