photo courtesy of goblueraiders.com

Just when MTSU officials thought they’d be able to tap a keg to sell beer at football, baseball and basketball games, those do-gooders at the General Assembly spoiled all the fun.

Leave it to the state’s most pious group of professional politicians to kill a good buzz. Never mind the fact they spend a lot of time protecting sexual deviants. As long as they keep beer out of the hands of college kids, they can save the world.

So unless you have access to the skyboxes or open-air boxes of boosters at football games, you’d better keep chugging all the beer you can before entering the gates of Floyd Stadium—unless, of course, you sneak in some of those mini-liquor bottles, which nobody I know would do.

For baseball and basketball games, though, forget about it because nobody tailgates before those anyway. Stay home if you want to drink.

The university—which is planning an $80–100 million athletics reconfiguration revamping Murphy Center and building football training facilities, student-athlete workout facilities and the like—was hoping to turn the True Blue experience into a true buzz, complete with beer and wine sales at all major sporting events. (Nobody was expecting beer and wine at track and field meets, but to bring out more fans to watch one of the university’s best athletic programs, you might as well give it a shot. Dean Hayes might enjoy a rowdy cheering section.)

Most people who’ve been around MTSU athletic events over the decades know the university’s had trouble drawing fans. Since cable TV started coming along in the 1980s, it’s been a fight to put fannies in the stands, especially when teams struggle. Only when the university puts on a major public relations campaign or teams are winning big do people pack the seats at Floyd and Murphy.

So beer and wine sales could be a big draw and inject a little cash into the coffers as MTSU makes a push to become a big-time athletics program. The Blue Raiders basketball team did beat Michigan State in the NCAA Tournament two years ago, after all.

But, by God, those state legislators who had to give the nod for approval just couldn’t let the university sell Miller Lite (Bud Light sucks). They argued 21-year-olds would be passing around beer to under-aged friends who would drive drunk and cause danger on the roads instead of just staggering back to dorm rooms.

They made a pretty good argument, too, because that’s exactly what would happen—at least the passing around beer part. With Uber and Lyft, fewer young people are driving after drinking than once was the case.

The only problem is: They’re drinking before and after games already. So stopping beer sales during games will only keep students from imbibing for two or three hours.

Seriously, anyone who’s ever been to a college football game in Murfreesboro or Knoxville knows the students tailgate harder than the adults, most of whom are more worried about grilling and watching Southeastern Conference games on big-screen TVs they put up temporarily in their tailgate territory. In fact, some might argue tailgating is more fun than going inside the stadium to watch the game.

On the flip side, boosters with a skybox or open-air box at Floyd Stadium can keep the party going throughout the game with access to beer, wine and liquor.

But those poor kids who consume a few beers before or after the game, they’ll have to go without their brewski come game time, which is probably a good thing. Because if they start walking back to a dorm or apartment afterward, they’re bound to run into MTSU’s finest (the police), meaning an instant citation for underage alcohol consumption, a couple of days in General Sessions Court, a year of probation, hundreds of dollars in fines and fees and generally pissed-off parents. But I digress.

It would be nice to think our college kids, when they leave home, will get up every Sunday morning and go to church, avoid alcohol like the plague and spend four hours a day studying (eight hours a day on weekends) while working at least 20 hours a week to keep up with rising tuition costs. Instead, they’re more likely to hit the books hard—if you’re lucky—and party like rock stars on the weekend.

The questions are: When will we treat 18-year-olds like adults since we’ll send them off to die in war? And, when will our legislators start policing their own ranks and let parents and university officials worry about the kids?

Gummy Bears Gone Bad

Last month’s Stockard Report detailed raids on stores across Murfreesboro and Smyrna where officers descended with search and arrest warrants to stop those greed-heads from selling gummy bears laced with pot-based cannabidiol.

The District Attorney’s Office thought it was armed with lab reports from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation showing the items sold were Schedule VI controlled substances—about as lethal as ibuprofen whether they come from pot or poppies.

But when those store owners—predominantly Middle Eastern folks and a handful of white business owners—raised an absolute fuss, those lab reports suddenly turned into a liability. At least the TBI ultimately said it couldn’t determine whether the candies and other items came from pot or hemp, which is legal to grow and process in Tennessee.

District Attorney General Jennings Jones said one thing, and the TBI said another, leaving them pointing fingers at one another and generally making people question the entire law enforcement community’s motives. Was this a legitimate bust or an attempt to win favor at the ballot box for people seeking election?

Anyway, Jones did the right thing by dropping the charges and letting those store owners get back to work, after Circuit Court Judge Royce Taylor had allowed them to reopen for business.

In his first term as district attorney, Jones is on the campaign committee and law enforcement panel for U.S. Rep. Diane Black, a Republican gubernatorial candidate. Her husband, David, also has been hiring lobbyists to derail legislation in the General Assembly allowing Tennesseans to use medical marijuana to cure several debilitating diseases.

But instead of getting into conspiracy theories here, let’s just commend Jones for making a wise decision in dropping the charges. Whether this bogus bust turns into a host of lawsuits against Rutherford County remains to be seen, because it could be hard to go to court against a judge’s search warrant.

For future reference, though, the DA’s Office and Sheriff Mike Fitzhugh might need to put more due diligence into their investigations and subsequent raids before holding press conferences in front of a padlocked business where they can’t answer the questions because they don’t really know the answers.

Jordan

No Atheists Allowed

The Tennessee Democratic Party is waging an uphill battle and the Rutherford County Democratic Party is in even worse shape in the buckle of the Bible Belt.

With Republican supermajorities controlling the state House, Senate, congressional seats and governor’s office, as well as most Rutherford County elected positions, it’s just hard for Democrats to make headway. Some people might even be scared to tell people they’re a Democrat because they might lose business.

So recruiting good candidates has been tough for the party over the past few years. Sure, some courageous souls have put themselves out on a limb, just as Gayle Jordan did in seeking a vacant state Senate District 14 seat this winter.

Jordan ran a half-decent race against former Republican state Sen. Jim Tracy in 2016, so when he left office for a federal job in late 2017, it only made sense for her to take another stab at it. Or did it?

Her opponent was Shane Reeves, a Murfreesboro pharmacist with pockets deep enough to pay for every Republican campaign in the state after selling Reeves-Sain Drugstore to Fred’s a couple of years ago. He and the Republican Party spent some $600,000 at least for a seat that pays $22,000.

The only thing that could have been worse was for Reeves to find out Jordan doesn’t believe in God. Well, not really. The only other thing even worse would have been for him to find out she runs a group called Recovering From Religion, which helps people get over their loss of belief in a deity and, presumably, an afterlife.

Reeves

During a political forum at the County Courthouse, Jordan sounded like a polished candidate, espousing expanded Medicaid, more rural broadband, better education, higher teacher pay, etc., while Reeves pushed less government involvement, a public-private partnership for dealing with health care and some other things I’ve since forgotten.

It really doesn’t matter, though, because what it came down to was this: One person told me after the forum he didn’t think the Bible Belt was ready for an atheist in the Senate. And when you put a Church of Christ deacon against an avowed atheist—albeit a former Southern Baptist—the outcome won’t be pretty.

We might have people in the Legislature who molest women, hit on teenagers and sleep with their cousin. But heaven help us if we ever let an atheist walk those hallowed halls where crooks and creeps have crept for at least the last half-century. When you look at the pictures on the walls of General Assemblies for the last 100 years, you start to wonder which one of those was having an affair with his secretary or attacking interns. Sad but true.

But the Democratic Party needs a good dose of reality, too. And here’s a tip: When you get beat by 44 percentage points, you don’t party like it’s 1999.