Jackson Jambalaya

The Wall Street Journal, yes, the Wall Street Journal, reported yesterday that LSU leads all college football team fan bases in drinking:

Louisiana State University fans weren’t sure what to expect from this football season. They couldn’t have anticipated that quarterback Joe Burrow would win the Heisman Trophy, Ed Orgeron would outcoach Nick Saban or the Tigers would be a heavy favorite in the national championship.

But there was one thing they did know: They were going to drink a phenomenal amount of beer.

So nobody was surprised when LSU fans managed to consume nearly 55,000 beers in one October game. They were proud of this achievement—at least until the very next game. That’s when LSU fans smashed their own record. By the time the game was over, Tiger Stadium had sold 60,687 beers, according to a university spokesman.

That win in October crowned LSU as the No. 1 team in college football and put the Tigers on the road to Monday’s national championship against Clemson. It was also the game that reminded the nation that LSU has always been at the top of the polls when it comes to boozing.

There is now data to support their claims of drinking superiority after the first season that the Southeastern Conference allowed member schools to sell alcohol in their football stadiums. It was a policy shift worth millions of dollars to LSU: selling booze in Tiger Stadium is a bit like selling water in a desert.

But when the LSU faithful invade other college towns, they have a nasty habit of leaving wreckage behind. They beat your football team. And then they drink your beer.

The first statistical evidence for LSU’s drinking aptitude came in 2011, when the Tigers played at West Virginia, one of the first schools in the country that sold beer. The stadium sold $255,396 worth of booze that day—or 82% higher than the average of the other games in 2011.

It was an astonishing number at the time. It’s only proven to be more exceptional since then.

But it was just another weekend for LSU—as Atlanta learned over the last month. Lee Kicker, an LSU alumnus in the city for a security conference the week of the SEC championship, felt it was his duty to share intelligence with the bartenders at the Marriott Marquis, a hotel that was about to be swarmed by LSU fans. Kicker informed them of an imminent attack on their beer.

“I was trying to give them a warning,” he said. “However much you think you need, double it. And maybe you’ll have enough.”

He turned out to be prescient. The Marriott Marquis scrambled to replenish the hotel’s beer supply as rumors of a drought spread on social media. And the hotel was ready when LSU fans came back a month later for the College Football Playoff semifinal. The Tigers won—and the Marriott Marquis doubled its alcohol sales from last year’s Peach Bowl. “They were obviously quite happy before, during and after the game,” said Paul Buff, the hotel’s director of marketing.

The same cannot be said for West Virginia. The locals were completely unprepared for what was about to happen when LSU arrived. The Mountaineers were blown out—and they fared better than the beer supply. They’re still marveling over the carnage at Morgantown bar Mario’s Fishbowl nearly a decade later.

“That weekend was definitely record-breaking,” said Kim Zweibaum, one of the bar’s owners. “We expected a lot. From what I remember, it blew away our expectations.” ..

Michael Sterchak, an officer at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, was not projecting booze-related problems when he and his future wife decided to get married in a place that happens to know something about beer: Wisconsin. They spent months planning every detail for their 2016 wedding at the Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee, but there was one thing they didn’t account for. LSU was playing Wisconsin that same night in nearby Green Bay.

Sterchak began to suspect there would be a problem when one of his groomsmen called him early on the morning of wedding day and told him to get downstairs to see the LSU fans crowding the lobby and emptying the bar. Soon a hotel staffer came to Sterchak with bad news: “We ran out of beer.” It was before noon.

This was not something he wanted to think about hours before his wedding. By the time he was dressed, the wedding planner had better news: There was still beer in Milwaukee, the bar had replenished and the hotel would position security officers outside the reception to police wedding crashers in purple and gold. “They mobilized like it was the National Guard,” Sterchak said.

Now the Tigers are playing the last game of the season in one American city that has never been confused for a place that would run out of alcohol. Sally Stiel, the LSU Alumni Association’s senior director of alumni engagement, says the group is used to working “very, very closely with food and beverage managers” to address their spiritual needs. This weekend required less work. “We’re not worried about New Orleans,” said Mignon Kastanos, the organization’s director of marketing.

The official alumni events before the game include an open bar at Walk-On’s Sports Bistreaux, a bar co-owned by an LSU alumnus and a local football aficionado named Drew Brees. Meanwhile, at the Bayou Beer Garden across town, bartenders have devised a highly sophisticated distributing method during LSU games, said owner David Demarest. They find some buckets and fill them with Bud Light and Miller Lite.

“Every bar is doing beer buckets,” Demarest said. “Even the wine bar.”