DATE: Monday, June 23, 1997                 TAG: 9706230144

SECTION: SPORTS                  PAGE: C1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Bob Molinaro 

                                            LENGTH:   59 lines

AS TOBACCO CLEARS, SUDS STAY SUPREME

Tobacco has no place in athletics.

Most big-time sports, NASCAR being the obvious exception, will drink to that, so long as the toast is made with an alcoholic product produced by a sponsoring brewery.

Pro sports floats on a river of suds. With the recent announcement of a proposed national ban on tobacco-company sponsorship of sporting events, the media sought a response from the car-racing industry. One place the press dropped in on was a track in Portland, Ore., site of an Indy-car race called the Budweiser-G.I. Joe's 200.

Yes, the world is still safe for beer companies to plaster their logos on 200-mph billboards.

No surprise, there. Beer and sports are almost one and the same. Perhaps nothing is more closely associated with the games we play - from slo-pitch softball to the major leagues - as beer.

Still, it's worth asking why tobacco gets sent to the showers (or pit road), while the cry of ``Gechurcolbeeer!'' echoes merrily through the sports scene.

For sure, tobacco is a killer. Which makes it an easy target for reformers who want to change American habits (spending and otherwise).

Sports' disassociation with smoking began a few years ago when arenas and stadiums outlawed cigarettes - or segregated smokers to a special section. Sports has been less successful, though, in protecting paying customers from the threat of second-hand abuse from drunks.

Almost a decade ago, the late baseball commissioner, Bart Giamatti, said: ``While it may have a number of social causes, fan unruliness cannot be separated from the issue of excessive use of alcohol.''

Now the reformers tell us that the tobacco ban is meant to protect our impressionable young sports fans from exposure to cigarette advertising.

``We have to look at the effects of cigarette marketing overall,'' said Minnesota Attorney General Hubert H. Humphrey III. ``We really have to ask ourselves, `Is this really appropriate? Is this the right thing to do?' ''

It is not appropriate to expose our children to romantic images of a vice that leads to cancer, heart attacks and yellow teeth. Everybody but Joe Camel agrees with this. But why is it perfectly all right to bombard young fans with beer ads?

As we all know, no game, match, tournament or race gets on television without the considerable support of the beer industry. If beer did not wield this sort of clout - much more than tobacco - perhaps the reformers and uplifters would take a closer look at the effects on our children of beer company sponsorship of sports events.

But do not weep for NASCAR or auto racing in general. It will easily survive the loss of the tobacco industry. For about two decades, Virginia Slims propped up women's tennis. Tennis and cigarettes formed an incongruous union, far worse than auto racing and cigarettes.

When tennis and the Slims finally parted, the sport did not go up in smoke. It landed another sponsor. Life went on.

The same will happen with motor sports. Car racing will do just fine once the Marlboro Man stops working the pits.

No butts about it.

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