Watering Holes

An autumn Saturday is not only a day for college football fans to see their teams in action, it is also a time to bend an elbow and share the day's joys—or drown its sorrows—with like-minded friends. As Artist Bernard Fuchs found on a nationwide pub crawl—and depicts on the following pages—there are taverns in every college town where unabashed rooters can hoist a few and raise the rafters without fear of contradiction. These aren't places where the atmosphere has been created by tacking up pennants and installing seats in school colors. Instead, their game-day (and night) hospitality has come about as naturally as the patina on the bar, and if the person next to you is a Lit. major or never reads anything other than a parlay card, who cares? Here only football counts.

After a win over Alabama, the two-story Alumni Club in South Bend overflowed with Notre Dame's happy followers.

Tennessee's 1976 season was fine for the pinball-machine business in Knoxville's Last Lap. This year, expect a Majors change.

With the Georgia-Florida game on TV, partisans of both teams sit quietly absorbed at Manuel's in Atlanta. The Bulldog rooters were hollering at the final gun.

Owner Jim England (foreground) and the Last Lap bartenders take five before a Tennessee kickoff.

Football frenzy and Halloween go together at Larry Blake's Rathskeller in Berkeley, Calif.

The interior of the Alpine Beer Garden near Stanford is packed and noisy, but in the dappled shade out back there's room to savor a satisfying brew or two.