The point of doing a list of the 10 best college bars is to give the reader a guide of places to check out if he or she ends up in one of these college towns. It is not to identify the places in those towns that pack in the most college students.
All due respect to college students, but we should not be counting on them to guide us. Would we want to live, or even spend an hour, in a college apartment? No. We would like to drop off some Pledge and bleach and wait for them in the car so we can take them to the best college bar in town to get some food. That’s not the place with the cheapest drink specials, permanently sticky counter tops and ketchup on bread being served as pizza slices. Places like that are in every college town.
The list that follows leans mostly toward dives with history, little gems that cater to a wider range of ages and offer more to the palate than cheap beer. These are the places the college kids can bring their parents, grandparents and younger siblings. These are the places they pop in for a drink before standing in line to cram into a meat market with 500 other kids and try to talk over thumping bass that leaves them with headaches. These are the places they hit the next morning to nurse the headaches.
You could do 10 lists just like this with 10 completely different bars on each one and be just as correct. You could do a couple of these just for Madison, Wis., and have tremendous companion bar crawls. The list that follows started with staff voting, so every bar that appears was introduced by someone on the college sports team. And don’t worry if you’re more of a sticky-surface person — there are a couple on here for you as well.
Agree or disagree with our list? Have your own recommendations and reviews? Tell us in the comments.
The Airliner, Iowa City, Iowa (University of Iowa)
Many of the bars that follow attract celebrities. The Airliner makes them.
(Or at least allows them to be discovered, as Ashton Kutcher was by a modeling agent while hanging out at “The ‘Liner” as an Iowa student in 1997. He was on “That ‘70s Show” by 1998.)
The ‘Liner, established by Joe Rinella in 1944, didn’t need that story to be the must-see attraction for any bargoer visiting Iowa City. The University of Iowa was a Navy pre-flight site during World War II, so many actual airmen had beers there after a long day of training in the early days. It continues to be a cozy place to eat and drink for an eclectic crowd, known for its pizza and a famous drink — “The Hammer” — with a secret recipe. Among aviation-themed burgers is The Stealth Bomber, with Cajun spices and blue cheese.
The Iowa “Beer Band” parades around town the night before home games. The Airliner, of course, is always the final stop.
The Boot, New Orleans (Tulane University)
Here we quickly depart from the idea of a cozy table with a Bloody Mary and a French Dip sandwich and go straight to a packed house of students consuming enormous amounts of cheap alcohol until the place closes at 6 a.m. But you can’t have any kind of bar list without an entry from New Orleans, right?
Also, to be clear, The Boot — ranked the No. 1 college bar by USA Today in 2013 — has charm, character and history. And it’s in a part of the city that French Quarter-centric tourists need to see. Originally a grocery store opened in the 1960s by former Tulane and New York Giants running back Eddie Price, it became a bar in the ‘70s. Shots are 50 cents on Tuesdays, which suggests little if any inflation over a half century on that item.
Crunchy’s, East Lansing, Mich. (Michigan State University)
A couple of blocks removed from the main bar scene on Grand River Avenue, Crunchy’s is easy to miss — and that’s how the regulars like it. The students who discover it share a karaoke microphone with veteran vocalists and beers out of large buckets.
Day or night in this delightful 1982-founded dive, the Crunchy’s burger is essential. Tom Izzo and other Michigan State luminaries have been known to devour it. The eternal East Lansing burger debate is Crunchy’s vs. Peanut Barrel, another bar befitting this list. Mike Krueger, who owns both places, refuses to declare a winner. But the pressed, spice-rubbed Crunchy’s burger sells more, so …
The Esso Club, Clemson, S.C. (Clemson University)
ESPN the Magazine wrote in the late 1990s of this former Gulf service station-turned-cherished watering hole: “If they had a national championship for college sports bars, The Esso Club would be our pick to win it all.”
Around the same time, Sports Illustrated gave it a No. 2 national ranking. It has changed a lot since the first beer was consumed on site in 1933, and is considerably larger since the national attention of a quarter century ago. Esso can pack them in on game days, offering a large outdoor area and panoramic view of Death Valley. And they’ll show up any day for the food — the chicken wings were just voted No. 1 in the Clemson community by the student paper, as they are most years.
He’s Not Here, Chapel Hill, N.C. (University of North Carolina)
Somewhere along the way, the story of this iconic bar’s name went as such: Michael Jordan was a regular, people kept calling for him and the standard phone greeting became: “He’s not here.”
The problem: The place opened 10 years before a freshman Jordan introduced himself to the nation with the shot to win the 1982 national championship. Manager Gavin Olivieri says the real story behind “he’s not here” is that the original owners were both going through divorces in the early days and would utter that often when their spouses would call.
The result: an unforgettable moniker for a place known for Blue Cups — 32 ounces of beer, cider or seltzer at $5 a pop. No liquor, no food, just an enormous outdoor patio teeming with Carolina Blue, popular bands, students, alumni and celebrities. Jordan is included from time to time.
Jack and Dan’s, Spokane, Wash. (Gonzaga University)
This isn’t just a football list. If you’re heading to a Gonzaga basketball game at “The Kennel,” this is where you pregame. It’s a few blocks away, and you never know who you might see.
“I’ll walk in and Karl Malone will be sitting there and I’m like, ‘What is Karl Malone doing here?’” says general manager “Big” Ed Eschenbacher. “He’s waiting for John (Stockton) to go fishing.”
Stockton’s late father is the “Jack” in the bar name, having bought it with Dan Crowley in 1961. It has for decades been the go-to spot for students and alumni, offering creative shots to the former, high-end food to the latter, and hot-selling hoodies to both. Things have changed a lot since the place was built in 1909, and since it was “Louie’s Snappie Service” during Prohibition — delivering pails of beer to trusted customers via motorcycle.
Jack and Dan’s in Spokane, Wash. (Photo courtesy of Jack and Dan’s)
The Library, Oxford, Miss. (University of Mississippi)
Former football players coming up with bars that have lasting power near their alma mater is one of the themes of this list, and former Ole Miss defensive back Johnny Desler got started right after graduation in 1997. A space that was previously the showroom of a Ford dealership became The Library, and eventually, he got the pool hall next door.
The result is the biggest bar of the bunch, part sports bar, part concert hall — with a mechanical bull, of course. It’s so popular with Ole Miss football players, current and former, that Desler says Eli Manning once called it “the locker room, with alcohol.”
That did not hurt business.
Linebacker Lounge, South Bend, Ind. (University of Notre Dame)
You better believe this legendary establishment was founded by a Notre Dame linebacker, and a shrewd one at that. Mo Pottios was a second-round pick of the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1961, and he leveraged his future salary to borrow $5,000 from owner Art Rooney. “The Backer,” as it’s popularly known, opened its doors in 1962.
It embodies the spirit of these rankings. Students, alumni, great burgers and other food, familiar faces such as Chris Zorich and Shane Gillis popping in, and too much memorabilia to get through in a visit or two.
“Our thing is clientele that’s so diverse compared to a lot of other places,” general manager Chantal Porter says. “We’ve got 21-year-olds and we’ve got 80-year-olds.”
Nick’s English Hut, Bloomington, Ind. (Indiana University)
Nick’s doesn’t need any sort of boost to land squarely in the top 10, but just in case, co-owner Gregg “Rags” Rago was a walk-on Indiana receiver in the 1970s for college football’s man of the hour, Lee Corso, whom he calls “a great man.” Rago’s bar has mostly been identified with Indiana basketball — such as the night it was left dry after Bob Knight’s Hoosiers won the 1981 NCAA title — but discovered last season how fun things can be with a quality football team playing a few blocks away.
Opened as a sandwich shop in 1927, Nick’s is a two-level homage to the past and a gathering place for the game of the moment. At one table, you might find a family of locals dining on pork tenderloin sandwiches, and next to them a group of IU students playing “Sink the Bismarck.”
Yes, Nick’s has its own drinking game. Sells a home version, too.
Wando’s, Madison, Wis. (University of Wisconsin)
If we’re ranking bar scenes, Madison sets the standard — Jordan’s Big 10 Pub and The Old Fashioned also earned votes, and The Great Dane and several others probably should have. The cheese curds alone at The Old Fashioned merit an honorable mention.
But Wando’s is the one.
You’re talking three stories of sports bar, each with a different vibe. This place packs in the students with delicacies such as the Fishbowl (an enormous mix of liquors), while an older crowd shows up for the Friday fish fry. And the history is rich for a place that opened in 1994.
Former Wisconsin walk-on punter Jay “Wando” Wanserski could not stick on the football team — a sub-1.5 GPA wouldn’t fly — but off the top of his head, he can rattle off a monster list of Badgers who have bounced for him, J.J. Watt and Zack Baun among them.
“I have to hold the record for most bouncers drafted,” he says.
Oh, and it was his jukebox that was used to choose “Jump Around” as the Camp Randall Stadium song in 1998, starting an epic tradition.
Still not convinced? Wando’s has a free bacon night.
(Illustration: Kelsea Petersen / The Athletic; Photos: Joe Rexrode / The Athletic)
