It is little surprise to know that alcohol is a prevalent force at professional sports games. No matter whether grabbing a beer at a baseball game or knocking back drinks while tailgating, it's considered to be red-blooded American tradition for alcohol to be a prominent factor at these events. This, however, has translated into many of these sports fans getting behind the wheel intoxicated – and paying the price.

In recent years, the media has been placing a limelight on the issues of alcohol-related incidents at professional sporting events, mostly focusing on assaults and drunk driving. These have made headlines for years and brought national attention to the issue. For example, in April 2004 Jeff Black and his nine-year-old song were attending a Colorado Rockies game at the Coors Field. Two men in the seats behind them repeatedly poured beer on the two – resulting in two convictions of assault.

The University of Minnesota has taken a considerable interest in the prevalence of alcohol at professional sports stadiums and has completed several studies on the matter. One research endeavor looked into the alcohol control policies and practices that can be found at stadiums. By conducting telephone surveys with food and beverage managers at 66% of the nation's professional sport stadiums, they discovered inconsistent policies. For example, some cap alcoholic beverage sales at two per sale while others don't; they also found some stadiums with particularly lax rules, even allowing servers under the legal drinking age to sell around the stadium.

This was then delved into deeper to see the affect that this had on the patrons of the games. By conducing breath test exams on 362 adults after 13 baseball games and 3 football games, the University of Minnesota School of Public Health discovered that only 60% had a blood alcohol content (BAC) of zero and that 8% were actually legal drunk and over the legal limit of 0.08 percent. It was also found that those who were tailgating had a 14 times greater chance of being legally drunk as 1 in 4 of these people reported having over 5 alcoholic beverages in their festivities.

The pooling size for this research was unfortunately limited as many were resistant to taking the test. It, however, was assumed using the available data that somewhere around 5,000 people leaving a National Football League (NFL) game will be above the legal limit. This is a harrowing statistic and leaves many police officers to be on the lookout when any stadium begins to empty out.

It, however, is important to remember that police officers are not always to just pull over whomever they wish without reason. They must have what is known as probable cause. Leaving a bar or leaving a stadium is not reasonable suspicion to think that someone is drunk – the law enforcement officer must first hand witness drunken behavior (such as swerving, abrupt speed changes or sudden stops) before they have reasonable cause to make a traffic stop.

So if you or a loved one have been arrested or criminally charged with drunk driving after a sporting event, regardless of whether it was baseball, football, basketball, hockey or other, then you should not hesitate to get the involvement of an experienced DUI lawyer to help you. These criminal charges are tough, but they are not an impossible charge to beat. By getting a knowledgeable attorney on your side, you can look into possible defenses such as unlawful police stops, faulty DUI testing or other.