Tailgating to the extreme comes with consequences
The near-legendary festivities before Bills games have boosted ticket sales but come with consequences
Published: October 18, 2009, 7:38 am
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Steve Shepherd started his liquid diet for the Buffalo Bills-Cleveland Browns game long before the opening kickoff last Sunday.
After boarding a tour bus in London, Ont., at 7:30 a.m., the 54-year-old London resident said he began downing mixed drinks of rye and Coke.
It was 5½ hours before kickoff.
During the three-hour ride, Clovis Lamirande, the bus driver and a retired police officer, said he warned Shepherd to ease off on the drinking, but Shepherd refused.
At about 2 p.m., Shepherd stumbled back from the stadium to the bus parking lot, after being refused admittance because of his intoxication.
"They wouldn't let me in. I wasn't thrilled, but I can't blame them. I'm drunk," Shepherd said sheepishly, his face scratched and cut from falling down. "I think somebody pushed me down."
Welcome to Buffalo's nationally recognized tailgating scene.
Hours before kickoff last Sunday, tailgating was in full swing in the parking lots outside Ralph Wilson Stadium, featuring plenty of eating and drinking -- actually, more drinking than eating.
Attracting out-of-town fans from Southern Ontario and throughout New York State is part of the Bills' strategy to regionalize their market. That's been a huge success, helping the Bills sell 55,194 season tickets, even after nine straight years out of the playoffs.
But tailgating comes with a price.
Tailgaters drink beer out of "beer funnels," down "bowling ball shots" and dine on a breakfast menu dubbed "kegs and eggs." They engage in drinking games that make the parking lots, filled with discarded beer bottles and smashed beer cans, look like Sunday morning outside a fraternity house.
The drinking, of course, has its consequences.
Public urination, wild and sometimes lewd behavior, sickness from excessive drinking and crude language provide a Bacchanalian atmosphere to the pregame and postgame scenes.
Some of that behavior also creeps into the stands, where some extremely drunk fans can make life miserable for a larger group.
The Bills acknowledge that problem but point to the majority of fans who tailgate responsibly.
"Tailgating is an integral part of the game day experience for many of our fans, and we will continue to tell our fans of the importance of doing so responsibly," said Russ Brandon, the team's chief operating officer. Fans who violate the team's fan-behavior policies risk ejection, revocation of tickets and criminal prosecution.
"We don't want a very small minority of fans who act irresponsibly to ruin the experience for the vast majority who enjoy tailgating in a responsible manner," Brandon added.
Last Sunday, that scene almost turned tragic, when a 19-year-old Clarence man accused of drunken driving injured six people with his vehicle and came close to running down others after the game, police have said.
Our national image
The tailgating scene has twin effects, providing more of an attraction to some fans than the game itself, while forcing others to vow that they'll never go back again.
Melinda Mesner, 31, of Lancaster, used to attend three or four games a year with her family, for about 10 years through the early 2000s. Until she and her husband went to a game in October 2005.
A drunken man behind them was vomiting all over their seats. And despite the pat-downs at the entrance gate, Mesner spotted a lot of beer cans under the man's seat. It prompted her to write a letter to The Buffalo News about the drunken behavior.
"That was the final straw," she said last week. "They've just let this tailgating before the games go too far. It's like a college fraternity. People in the parking lot are trying to get as drunk as they can."
The pregame partying has given Ralph Wilson Stadium a national reputation, both good and bad, for its tailgating scene and crowd behavior.
This isn't rocket science, but an SI.com survey last year ranked Ralph Wilson Stadium eighth best overall as a desirable game day venue out of 32 National Football League teams. The Bills and their fans finished first in tailgating, 15th in stadium atmosphere and 28th in their treatment of opposing fans.
And last October, The Wall Street Journal dubbed Bills fans "some of the worst-behaving fans in all of sports."
Hans Steiniger, a 1993 Lancaster High School graduate who has visited 27 of the 31 NFL stadiums, has much more perspective than most about fan behavior at Ralph Wilson Stadium.
"I really believe right now we're in the middle of the pack," Steiniger said last week.
He remains bothered by some behavior inside the stadium, and he knows the culprit.
"When people pour beer on you, spit on you or are belligerent toward you, you really have to point a finger at excessive drinking," he said.
Steiniger, who lives in Michigan but still attends some Bills games, believes most tailgaters in Orchard Park police themselves pretty well.
But he has the same concerns cited by many local law enforcement officials.
"I think a lot of these long bus jaunts, from Canada or Rochester or Albany, have really hurt our reputation," he said. "These fans spend the whole morning drinking on those bus rides."
Designated drivers
Those long rides are a double-edged sword.
The riders, no matter how much they drink, at least aren't getting behind the wheel. But they can cause other problems once they reach the stadium.
"What I tell people is, it is cheaper to rent a limousine than to pay for a DWI, or, worse, kill somebody," said limo driver Keith Miller, who had driven a group from the Rochester area last Sunday.
But is it worth it to transport large groups of people who sometimes view the games mainly as drinking festivals?
When one of many stretch limousines eased into the stadium parking lot Sunday, passengers hoisted their champagne glasses out through the open windows to toast their arrival from Albany.
The drinking, they said, started at 8 a.m. when they began heading west.
"We didn't have to drive, so we could party with the Buffalo Bills," said passenger Katherine "Kat" Newsholm.
That excessive partying is exactly why Orchard Park Police Officer Bill Hanrahan, who patrols the lots, says he will not take his teenage son to the games.
"I've never brought my son here, and I never will," Hanrahan said. "He obviously knows this type of thing occurs, but I'm not going to expose it to him myself."
Hanrahan and his partner, Officer Leonard Govenettio, say they often are taken aback by what they see.
"I couldn't believe it when I saw what looked like a 50-year-old guy doing a beer funnel," Hanrahan said.
A beer funnel involves pouring a can of beer into a funnel attached to a thick plastic hose, and once the hose is filled, drinking down its contents without stopping.
Other tailgaters participate in "bowling ball shots," filling one of the holes with hard liquor, raising the ball and chugging the shot.
Fans opting for those drinking methods often invite passing strangers to stop and partake at no charge.
Some would call that camaraderie. Others would consider it decadent.
The Bills and local police agencies have teamed up for several initiatives that they think will either help slow down the excessive drinking or help them respond to alcohol-related problems.
Making strides
"We have communicated to trip organizers who utilize bus transportation to and from the games and encouraged them to advise their respective groups that we strictly enforce the policies and procedures set forth in our Fan Behavior Policy," said David H. Wheat, the team's senior vice president for business.
Among those initiatives:
• Providing fans with an easier way to report unruly behavior from their seats in the stands, either by texting stadium personnel at 78247 or dialing 312-8933.
• Efforts by the Erie County Sheriff's Office and the state police to set up more postgame roving DWI patrols, to target underage drinking in the parking lots, to have ATVs roam the parking lots and to put a helicopter in the sky to help pinpoint problems outside the stadium.
• As part of their Fan Code of Conduct, Bills officials can say that security officers arrest an average of 30 to 35 fans per game; that security personnel eject or turn away at the gates another 100 to 200 people; that the team cuts off beer sales at the end of halftime, earlier than many NFL teams; that they've revoked 12 season tickets held by season-ticket holders arrested at the stadium; and that they have taxis available to escort highly intoxicated fans back home.
"The Bills take alcohol-related matters and the dispensation of alcohol at Ralph Wilson Stadium very seriously," said Scott Berchtold, vice president for communications.
Berchtold added that fans aren't allowed to bring alcohol into the stadium, that they're limited to two beers per purchase, and that concession-stand vendors are trained to deny serving anyone they feel is drunk.
But some fans think those restrictions are like putting lipstick on a pig, that the only answer is more extreme measures, such as banning alcohol in the parking lots or eliminating beer sales inside.
Those aren't likely to happen.
Tailgating draws a huge crowd of fun-loving Bills fans, helping the team sell so many tickets amid rough economic times and a long playoff drought.
And the Bills sell a few hundred thousand dollars worth of beer at each game.
As one Bills official said a few years ago, "We thought about [eliminating beer sales] for about 10 seconds. We're not going to punish all the people who enjoy a beer responsibly because of the actions of a few people."
Law enforcement officials have some less drastic suggestions, including opening the parking lots later [than five hours before game time], having fewer 4 p.m. and night games and banning alcohol in the area between the parking lots and the entrance gates.
Drinking to excess
Several individuals making their way through the parking lots last Sunday said the tailgating, even when it gets out of hand, does not bother them.
Chris Fausner of Huntington, Long Island, said he loves coming to the games with his 13- year-old daughter, Alli.
"It's all part of the show. I've gone to games in the Meadowlands, Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia and at Foxboro and there's no place like here," Fausner said. "My daughter knows there's crazy people in the world, people who go over the top."
Browns fan John Wages of Akron, Ohio, and several friends were parked near the buses and remained there throughout the game with no intention of entering the stadium. They, in fact, drove to Orchard Park without game tickets.
"We're here for the festivities," Wages said, sipping a beer. "They won't let you tailgate like this in Cleveland."
For a group of restaurant workers from Toronto, partying clearly was a big draw that brought them to Orchard Park.
Nathalie Charmet said the two-hour bus ride involved consumption of two types of vodka and two types of beer.
"Everyone was just smashing them back. We turned it into a big party, and we probably won't watch much of the game," Charmet said. "One of my girlfriends fell out of the bus and onto the ground. She spilled her drink and everything in her purse."
Alexis Green, part of the Toronto contingent, said everyone managed to behave at the border crossing into the U.S.
"If you're being obviously ridiculous, they won't let you cross. You have to behave and no smart-ass remarks," Green said. "You have to save the really good time for when you get here."
That's something her fellow Canadian, Steve Shepherd, from London, failed to negotiate.
As he bobbed and weaved his way back to his bus, Shepherd told The Buffalo News he hoped to sober up enough inside the vehicle so he could catch at least a portion of the game.
But Lamirande, the bus driver, refused to let Shepherd inside to sleep it off.
"I'm not going to baby-sit someone who doesn't have the common sense to know when to stop drinking," Lamirande said.
Not all the fans refused entry into the stadium because of their intoxicated condition were as meek as Shepherd. Craig Zarzycki, an Albany-area resident, kept questioning security personnel after his friend was arrested for refusing to leave an entrance gate.
Zarzycki, earlier, had been drinking outside the limousine he had ridden in to the game. He spoke of being a Bills fan ever since he was young boy and how he was looking forward to going to the game.
"I'm having a blast," he said, wobbling about. "I'm trying to take in the atmosphere. You know I played college football at Alfred. Please put that in the story. I'll give you a million dollars."
That was at 1:30 p.m. More than an hour later, Zarzycki appeared shocked and dazed as he was handcuffed and whisked into the back of a golf cart by stadium security personnel.
Another statistic from a day of excesses.
lmichel@buffnews.com and gwarner@buffnews.com
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