Friday Beer Post: 2013 Gameday Beer-o-the-week - Central Arkansas Edition

Each week throughout the football season I'm going to suggest a good beer for the ubiquitous pre-game tailgate. Let's be honest, with tailgates it's not always top quality that you're looking for. To steal a phrase from the heinous beer terrorists at Budweiser, you want "drinkability." (or what a real beer connoisseur calls "a session beer") So, be warned, these may not be "the best" beers around. But, in the words of Dave Chappelle as Samuel L. Jackson "IT'LL GET YOU DRUNK!"

The most famous athlete to ever matriculate through the University of Central Arkansas is, undoubtedly, Scottie Pippen.  The six-time world champion, seven-time All-Star, and member of the NBA's all-time top-50 list was completely overlooked coming out of high school, and never received a single Division-1 scholarship offer.  Undeterred, he chose to walk-on as a manager at UCA - a local school that, at the time, was in the NAIA.  A growth spurt and a pair of All-American campaigns in '86 and '87 would catapult him into the NBA Draft, which eventually lead him to Chicago and the Michael Jordan-era Bulls.

Pippen in purple.  From: ESPN.

As a young basketball fan growing up in the Chicagoland Area, I couldn't help but fall in love those Bulls teams of the early 90s.  How can you avoid following a local team that consistently brings home trophies?  Pippen, even more than Jordan, was my favorite player on those teams.  MJ would get all the press and endorsements, but Scottie's well-rounded game spoke to me in a way the flashier Jordan's never did.  Case-in-point, I owned a Bulls #33, never a #23.

In honor of Pippen and those Bulls teams from my youth that I loved so dearly, I'm naming the official beer of Pippen's first years in Chicago, Old Style, as my gameday beer-o-the-week.

I've long thumbed my nose at Old Style for being unworthy.  Swill for Cubs fans too ignorant to drink something different from their fathers.  Still, for reasons unknown, I decided to give it a try over the summer.  Possibly a miss-guided sense of nostalgia for something I've never had.  I honestly don't know.

What I discovered is that I like it better than PBR.  ... Yep, that's all I got - it's better than America's ironically terrible hipster lager.  To my tongue, Old Style tastes like water with a faint touch of malt.  Mostly just water though.

On the plus side, it's great for beer pong, because you can lose, and lose, and lose, but not mind, because it doesn't taste like anything.  An improvement over that 'please, no more PBR' feeling that I usually get at the table.  For that, and that alone, it gets a thumbs up from me.  Plus it's 'our great beer, and they can't have it!' Screw you, New York and Los Angeles!

Happy Friday!  Go Buffs, beat the Bears!