Well, as the board's resident Arizona Cardinals season ticket holder, who also attends most games with a person under 21, I suppose I should weigh in here.
There are some overly aggressive security types at the stadium. There also is a rather amazing lack of consistency, especially with respect to foul language and seating violations (like sitting in the wrong seat). Some get very aggressive and escalate. Others ignore. Probably no different from anywhere else.
On the beer thing, chalk me up as voting for discretion. Having a minor hold a beer actually is not a violation of any law. Giving alcohol to a minor is, but there's an important legal difference. Giving means that you relinquish your right in the alcohol. Literally. You own it. You give up your ownership and vest ownership in another. That's what the law prohibits. It does not prohibit putting a beer near a minor. Put another way, for obvious reasons, the law is not access based -- that is, it is not a crime every time a person puts an alcoholic beverage somewhere that a minor can access it, unless it is done with the intention that the minor in fact does access it.
Having your youngster hold your beer while you dig out your camera, so long as you neither intend to have him drink it or give up your ownership of it to him, is impossible to distinguish from putting it down in front of him. What if you put your beer in his cup holder thinking it was yours? What if you are getting mustard on your hot dog and place it down on the condiment cart in front of him. Why would his hand be different? It's not, for legal purposes. The question is your intent. Putting it in his hand so it doesn't spill is not different from putting it on the condiment cart, if your intent is the same.
Now, perhaps the Arizona Cardinals have a policy that minors cannot touch a vessel containing alcohol. If they do, they don't publish it.
I usually have one beer per game, at the beginning of the game. Typically, I get the beer on the way to our seats and then we stop at the bathroom. I don't bring the beer in, because that's gross, so usually he goes in first, and then comes out, and then I put it on top of a garbage can next to the door, and he stands near it. I won't be doing that any more. I would think it's probable that at times I actually have asked him to hold it, like when digging money out of my pocket to buy him some pop corn (which is at a different stand) or something like that. I won't do that either. But to say that I have committed a crime in that cirumstance is absurd. In no case was my intention to let him have a beer.
