DEAR BERNIE MACHEN: HAVE A DRINK, PLEASE

High time some other university’s president exhibits some douchiness.

Of course, Machen was a finalist for the UGA job along with Adams.

Don’t you hate pants, Bernie?

I think I can see my seats in that photo…yes, there…lower right quadrant right under the solar flare.

Allow me a little plagiarism, folks:

GRANDSTANDING GASBAG GRANDSTANDING GASBAG GRANDSTANDING GASBAG GRANDSTANDING GASBAG GRANDSTANDING GASBAG GRANDSTANDING GASBAG GRANDSTANDING GASBAG GRANDSTANDING GASBAG GRANDSTANDING GASBAG GRANDSTANDING GASBAG GRANDSTANDING GASBAG GRANDSTANDING GASBAG

This has mission creep written all over it. If we let them win this, pretty soon he and Adams will be asking Saint Simons to close for the week.

Why don’t we just declare Duval County dry and get it over with?

Bernie should just embrace Swindle’s alternative suggestion for the game: The World’s Biggest Outdoor Coke Orgy. You won’t go falling off parking garages when you’re all coked up and getting your freak on (which in this case really means deviant behavior, thanks to the coke, and not just a playful use of colorful idiom). At least, that’s what my friends tell me.

Sorry, but I don’t see anything wrong with this and neither will you if you ever have kids. I am no holier-than-thou type at all. For proof, I attended West Virginia University. What goes on at The World’s Largest Cocktail Party is amateur time compared to a regular Saturday in Morgantown. I tailgate, I have alcohol at my tailgates.

It is the job of a University president to take a stance in this type of situation. At WVU, the couch burnings totally got out of control to the point that a car was burned. Someone eventually was going to be seriously injured or die. The university president worked with the city and have now made couch burning offenses pay a much stiffer fine and if its over $500 damage, a felony along with grounds for getting kicked out of WVU. I applaud that even though I have a t-shirt saying Play Like Your Couch is On Fire.

Anyone with common sense can see that the WLCP has gotten to the point where some constraints are needed. Its not going to shut down the drinking, its not going to interfere with the fun. Reigning it in is needed and it is the responsibility of the school presidents involved to do that. Adams should have joined in also.

I know the family of the boy that died at the parking deck. If you had kids, you would agree with this.

Imagine how many lives would be saved if Florida just stopped their football program altogether…

Need to get that shit totally off your conscious, Machen.

Bernie is right. Alcohol is the problem. Particularly, alcohol combined with youth. We should pass a law with a minimum drinking age. I’d say 18, but you already have so many cool things to look forward to at that milestone, you can now vote, join the army, etc. No, let’s make it 21. Spread the joy of discovery to yet another milestone. That should solve the problem.

Bernie obviously has ties to organized crime. That is the only explaination for him to want to shut down the avenues of purchased legal alcohol, so that he can sell more of his bathtub gin. Don’t cave in to the bootleggers people! Keep alcohol flowing and competition keen. It is the American way!

“What goes on at The World’s Largest Cocktail Party is amateur time compared to a regular Saturday in Morgantown.”

You’ve been going to the wrong Cocktail Parties, homes.

I have a kid. I think Bernie and Mike are wasting valuable time which could be spent making their respective institutions better by providing “leadership” on this issue. If they really wanted to do something about it, they’d go home-and-home where the universities would have more control over the venue, environment, etc., and the precious little darlings legally defined as grown adults (otherwise known as college students: yay! no more in loco parentis!) wouldn’t be driving 6 hours (or, alternatively, 90 minutes) for a football game where they will conduct themselves with the same (or less) decorum which they display on regular home game Saturdays.

I suppose the dollars don’t add up to take such a drastic step. In UGA’s case, I know Jacksonville makes it worth the Athletic Department’s while to keep going down south for the now annual ass beating.

if bernie isnt careful, the sun will sick Peter King, disciple of the sun, on him

50% of the alcohol providers in Jacksonville think this is a really good idea…

I was working at an establishment in Gainesville and saw Lord Machen have a few glasses of wine and drive off in his Mercedes. So, I could give two-shits when he talks about student/alum drinking.

I fail to see how reducing providers by 50% will do anything except boost sales of the remaining providers by 50%.

Also most people getting blootered are doing so outside of bars and with whatever was on sale at the liquor store.

That said, the idea of help stations isn’t bad, god knows I probably should have staggered to one on several occasions had they existed. Though I most likely would have ruined it by asking for another drink.

“You’ve been going to the wrong Cocktail Parties, homes.”
You obviously have never tailgated in Morgantown, “homes”.

The point is a college president should not just turn a blind eye to an event involving his school that is spiraling out of control. Will it cure all underage drinking, binge drinking, fights, accidents, bring peace in the mideast etc?
No. But speaking out and asking for some stricter control on the amount of alcohol sold is definitely needed.

The problem is not the number of vendors there with drinks to sell, it’s the number of people there that are motivated to get hammered. And that number will not change regardless of what President Machen tries to do about it. He’s picking the wrong battle with this one.

They should just play the games at UGA and UF, forget the Jacksonville bullshit.

From someone who was going to these games in the early 80s….Machen has no idea how much this game has naturally mellowed. It was scary back in the day…fights everywhere….passed out people everwhere….bad smells from the docks and paper mills…this game atmosphere is down right civil today….

Is it time for the return of the “Fun Flask”

If I’m not mistaken, Mike Adams (UGA prez) supported changing the age of imbibement, to 18. Probably just throwing a little love toward an alcohol distributor donor.

If you look at the legal drinking ages around the world, the general consensus is 18. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_drinking_age

Whether legally drinking in a bar (expensive) or illegally drinking in a parking lot alters ones consumption, is another subject.

Like Counter Trap said, this is just grandstanding. I would say that he is throwing some love to a religious donor, but we all know that Gainesville is godless.

@7, you simply cannot claim the WLOCP is amateur and then try to be taken seriously…that’s half blog posting, and half letter to the editor. And also incorrect. In 1985, I witness two seperate fights that resulted in a whiskey bottle broken over someone’s head.

To those who claim the WLOCP is amateur: My friend got mauled by a bear once in Jacksonville while he was 3 sheets to the wind. So what? That probably happens a lot in Morgantown. The difference is that bears don’t live in Florida.

The only way to stop the drinking is to close all the bars + liquor stores/grocery stores/gas stations in Jacksonville and beyond. And people would still find a way to get it.

Hello, Alcohol was not the problem. Gravity was.

Had Jacksonville just turned down the gravity by 50%, those falls wouldn’t have been fatal.

Bernie should stick to the things he does best, like trying to rig the US News college rankings with his “questionable” ranking tactics.

http://www.gainesville.com/article/20090616/ARTICLES/906169915?Title=On-survey-Machen-rates-UF-with-Harvard-other-Fla-schools-low

Morganhole. Ha.

Is there a thread of “Let’s make it home and home so we can save lives?” happening here… really?!?

Everyone knows that WV is a subdivision of aluminum homes parked outside of Virginia. I saw them mountain people that year Florida played them in football. They brought their homes to New Orleans and got whipped. Florida people stole all their moonshine.

Bernie is wasting his time!