Nearly six months after an alcohol ban was pledged for University of Hawai'i football games at Aloha Stadium, we are left with ...

Well, what exactly have all the grand speeches, hours of testimony, task forces, deferrals, deliberations and votes brought us?

Very little, actually.

Yesterday's 6-1 vote against instituting a ban on alcohol in the parking lot by the Aloha Stadium Authority assures there will be no change in rules. There will still be alcohol allowed at UH games — both in the stadium and at tailgates — for 2006 and, indeed, probably the foreseeable future.

Basically, state officials and their appointees charged up to the line of scrimmage full of inspiration, changed formations a couple of times ... and punted.

They have as much as said: We're damned if we do and damned if we don't. So we won't do anything in an election year.

They have, in effect, kicked the issue of drinking responsibly back to those on whom it ultimately falls upon in the first place: the fans. Only time will tell on the wisdom of that.

For all the high-minded hopes and talk that went into this from early August, we probably shouldn't be surprised at where it wound up yesterday. Disappointed, to be sure, but hardly shocked.

Ideally, the authority would have made its stand on banning alcohol sales inside the stadium. That's where the vote should have been for that's where the real problem has been and enforcement would have been easiest. Not in the parking lots where incidents have been rare and enforcement all but impossible.

Banning in-stadium sales would have been the tough but principled stand. The kind of "value" decision that Lt. Gov. James "Duke" Aiona and UH President David McClain called for when proposing an alcohol ban along the lines of the growing majority of places in college athletics.

Having done that, the authority could have left the tailgate parties alone on a wait-and-see basis, a pointed and meaningful warning.

But the more they looked into the reality of stopping sales in the seats, the authority found itself staring at a tougher, more expensive decision than it was prepared to make. Such a ban would have exposed the state to legal action by the vendors, cost the stadium what estimates said would be upward of $1 million in revenue and undoubtedly added to UH's already declining attendance.

So, the authority flirted with the token concept of banning alcohol in the parking lot, no doubt envisioning it as the path of least resistance. What it apparently didn't grasp until later was just how much public outcry there would be and how transparently hypocritical the stand would come across.

The surprise isn't that the authority punted the issue high and far, just that it took almost six months to get the kick off.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.