Party On, Football Schools

Penn State garnered top party school honors this year in the annual Princeton Review's ranking of top party schools. The top 20 schools are listed, and as I wistfully scanned the list and daydreamed about a time when all I had to worry about was whether the kegs would make it through the night or whether we'd have to scramble for more cases of Natty Light, I came to a startling conclusion: It's almost as if major college football and partying go together.

Shocking, no?

So in honor of college football's apparent impact on the most important ranking this side of the Harris Interactive Poll, let's run through the 20 party scenes -- including one college you've never heard of, ClayNation style.

1. Penn State

People have already started drinking in Happy Valley because they think it will make their arguments better as to why an undefeated Penn State team should get to play Texas over a one-loss Florida team.

2. Florida

I've had a lot of fun with Gator girls and their bingo wings. But the school knows how to party. Except on football Saturdays when the cops turn into fascists and will arrest you for having an open container on University Boulevard.

And if you get arrested you have to spend the night in jail. Talk about a kick in the ass. This is definitely going to happen to several SEC fans this fall. They're going to roll into Gainesville, get put in jail, and listen on the radio as their team loses by 50.

Come to think of it, I just hope this doesn't happen to me.

3. Ole Miss

Anyone who has ever been to Ole Miss is jealous that they aren't on Ole Miss's campus right now. Even at this exact moment when it's 438 degrees in the Delta and all the coeds have decided to spend the day drinking by the pool in their bikinis ... I can't go on.

I'm already plotting my trip to Oxford this November. This is something you have to do since there are only 14 hotel rooms in the entire Oxford area. So we're compromising by staying in a Tunica casino. Basically I'm trying to lump all my sinning into the same weekend.

How wild is it at Ole Miss? They have raves at the library.

4. Georgia

I've called Athens the Cleavage Capital of the South and suggested that the tagline for the city should be, simply, Athens: Where Boobs Are Fun.

I don't know how any football recruit in the country visits Athens on a weekend and ends up going to another school.

Honestly.

It's that much fun.

Now imagine if Bulldawg undergrads could drink for enjoyment instead of to dull the pain of another collapse by the Georgia defense under Willie Martinez.

5. Ohio University

Long overshadowed by their neighbors in Columbus, the Bobcats of Ohio toil in comparative oblivion in the MAC. Which explains why they party so hard.

If you drink enough you can almost convince yourself that you're a student at Ohio State.

6. West Virginia

The Deadwood of college campuses. Remember how Yoo fed all of Swearingen's victims to pigs? At West Virginia they do this if you can't finish an entire bottle of Maker's Mark before a football game.

WVU: "We put the riot in party."

7. Texas

Austin is purportedly the greatest city in America that doesn't lie on either coast. I don't know, I've never been. But I have seen the girls in those chaps and orange shorts on the sideline of games. Which does enough for me.

If Texas and Florida end up playing in the BCS title game this fall, doesn't this just seem unfair? How much better does any college kid's life at Florida or Texas deserve to be? It's warm all year round, your teams never lose, and both teams are going undefeated?

8. Wisconsin

True story, one of alcohol's many great powers is that it makes you feel less cold. That's important in a place like Madison, Wis.

Second true story, if your parents want to buy you a beer in a Wisconsin bar, you're allowed to consume it with them. Even if you're 11 or 12.

It's such a surprise that kids raised like that end up liking to party in college.

9. Florida State

Remember when the cameras panned to the crowd and landed on Jenn Sterger wearing a bikini in the student section? And even Brent Musberger, Brent Musberger!, couldn't avoid commenting on her. That's what life is like in Tallahassee. All those girls who don't have good enough test scores to get into UF anymore, yeah, they're here.

10. University of California-Santa Barbara

Have you ever been to Santa Barbara? You can't live in the city for less than a million dollars. It's probably the last place on earth where you need to dull the pain of college with alcohol. You live in paradise and you're in college. The people are so good looking in this town, and this is true, that when you apply for a job as a waiter, most restaurants ask if you have a head shot.

How much better can your life get?

Can I re-enroll and major in PE?



11. Colorado

Boulder is kind of like utopia. Everyone is rich, everyone is nice, and everyone parties all the time. So what if their athletic teams always lose. Your life ends up pretty nice anyway.

Now if only LenDale White hadn't gotten away to USC ...

12. Iowa

Iowa is another state I don't know much about. I've never been. I get the impression that everyone drinks here because they wish they were somewhere else.

Also, they always have white wide receivers. Iowa seems to breed fast white boys. I don't know why.

On the positive side, the state's unemployment rate is one of the lowest in the nation. Maybe everyone's drinking to celebrate ... and to create more jobs for people who pick vomit out of things.

13. Union College

Old fraternity training teaches me that the first fraternities in America came from Union College. Our first school that doesn't have major athletic programs. Outside of UC-Santa-Barbara. Let's be honest, 95 percent of the drinking associated with this school is based on how much fun it is to attempt to pronounce Schenectady after six beers in an hour.

You try.

It's impossible.

14. Indiana

You'd drink if you had to put up with the Kelvin Sampson era as well. Point of demarcation here, this represents the first BCS-level basketball-first school to make the list.

Either that or Indiana football fans (don't those three words together make your skin crawl with discomfort to read?) are dulling the pain of the early fall by whiling away their time ignoring the team.

15. DePauw

Several of my friends went to DePauw which is not to be confused with DePaul in Chicago. DePauw is a tiny college in the middle of nowhere Indiana. What do they do for fun?

One of my best friends once walked into his fraternity house to see a fraternity brother who was involved in a sex act while watching ... wait for it ... Major League. It's unbefitting a family Web site like this to go into further detail, but let's just say that, like Pedro Ceranno in a fit of frustration with Jobu, he did it himself.

He, of course, blamed alcohol.

As well he should.

16. Tennessee

Tennessee leads the nation in the number of women who wake up in the morning and think, "Wait, I went home with him?"

Which means if you're looking at colleges and you're male, UT should be on your list.

17. Sewanee: The University of the South

My best man went to this school. About 1,200 kids go to college on top of a mountain surrounded by a 10,000-acre campus. Once I showed up to visit him and found him cutting strips of old dark brown shag carpeting in the front yard outside his dorm room.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Making clothes for the viking party," he said. "Everyone makes their own outfit and you have to wear it there to get inside."

Some girls made Viking bikinis.

Needless to say, the party was awesome beyond words.

18. North Dakota

I don't know a single thing about North Dakota that isn't Mount Rushmore related. And I just Googled Mount Rushmore and found out it's actually in South Dakota.

Who knew? Other than South Dakotans?

19. Tulane

Remember in the wake of hurricane Katrina when everyone worried that Tulane would vanish as a school that anyone wanted to attend?

Wrong.

They buckled down and did what they had to do, kept shutting down the school for Mardi Gras and battening down the hatches for drinking. Good for them.

20. Arizona State

The Daily Show referred to Arizona State as "the Harvard of date rape." That was unfair.

A football player who shall remain nameless informed me that they had to institute a no tanning rule on the quad near campus because there were too many car accidents from drivers ogling the women.