VAUGHT: Free Beer Day marks strange twist for a Kentucky road game

By LARRY VAUGHT

It’s not unusual for Kentucky to face hostile, amped up crowds when it plays road games and that certainly will be the case tonight when UK plays at Texas Tech.

However, this has a strange twist — Texas Tech apparently is going to provide beer for students of legal age during a tailgate that starts seven hours before the game.

Texas Tech coach Chris Beard and point guard Davide Moretti invited students to the tailgate that will offer free food and beer. They also asked students to wear black to the game for the kind of “blackout” UK often faces.

Now it’s naive to think without the free beer that some college students would not drink before attending a big matchup like this. Or that some under age 21 will do the same.

But to invite students to start drinking seven hours before a game and encourage them to do it seems like a bad idea as anyone at Kentucky knows after the tragedy that took the life of a young fan at a UK football game.

Kentucky coach John Calipari was asked Friday what he thought about students being given free beer at a Texas Tech pep rally?

“They’re giving free beer to students? At the game? On campus? Wow,” Calipari said.

What about double wow?

“I mean, it’s been hat day, cap day, shirt day, blackout, whiteout, red-out. Now it’s beer day. I have not heard of that before,” Calipari said.