Tennessee Vols still victims of SEC hypocrisy after alcohol policy revision

The Southeastern Conference revised its alcohol policy, but it’s still hypocritical with the Tennessee Vols. The Volunteers can’t cash in on Rocky Top.

It was a day of celebration for fans across the SEC. News broke Friday that the league has revised its policy banning alcohol sales at games. However, the new regulations don’t change the conference’s hypocrisy when it comes to the Tennessee Vols.

With the new rules, alcoholic drinks can be sold at designated locations in stadiums. They must end at specific times, including the end of the third quarter for football and women’s basketball, the 12-minute TV timeout of the second half for men’s basketball, the end of the top of the 7th inning for baseball and the end of the top of the 5th for softball.

Bur one regulation keeps a major bit of hypocrisy still in place: alcoholic beverage sales are limited to beer and wine. So where is the hypocrisy? Well, the Tennessee Vols have a tradition etched with playing Rocky Top at games.

What’s the second verse of Rocky Top? “Once two strangers climbed ole’ Rocky Top lookin’ for a moonshine still.” The SEC has had no issues profiting off that song for years on behalf of the Tennessee Vols, and that specific lyric is in there.

However, UT can’t cash in by selling any sort of moonshine-based drinks at football or basketball games. So this lift on alcohol bans is a sham. We’re not saying they should actually sell what was once traditionally moonshine. But the type of moonshine-based drinks sold in liquor stores nowadays would suffice.

More from All for Tennessee

UT would be able to sell its own brand of moonshine if the SEC lifted this ridiculous ban. What’s the point? People are still going to get drunk off of it before heading to the stadium, so banning it when you’re allowing alcohol and beer sales won’t change anything.

This is just an arbitrary ruling by the league to still exert some sort of authority. But it makes no sense. One of the regulations in the stadium is limits on numbers of drinks to sell. If that’s the case, why is there a concern about selling hard liquor or mixed drinks as opposed to beer?

Now, fans will just drink the hard liquor before games as they’ve been doing, then they’ll buy a beer at the game. It would’ve been better to just sell it all at the game, and maybe some fans would limit what they drink before arriving.

Next. Projecting the Vols' 2019 2-deep depth chart. dark

The SEC did take a step forward with its policy, but the hypocrisy against the Tennessee Vols still remains. They have no problem cashing in on any way the school would use the lyrics in Rocky Top to bring in money, but they don’t want to let the school cash in on selling liquor at the games. It’s beyond ridiculous.

Home/Tennessee Volunteers