How many beers could Shaq drink?

"How many beers do you think Shaq could drink?” – Me
“Shaq could drink an ass load of beer.” – Reader PNH91

As I attempted to answer this three issues immediately arose:

3. Does Shaq even drink? And if so, does he drink beer? I wanted to press ahead but this was a huge stumbling block for me. So I did some research and found a post by Miami gossip columnist Lesley Abravanel. Under the title Scarred:

“To escape the girlie games, Shaq and friends rented the penthouse at the Shelborne and partied there to the tune of Cristal, Grey Goose and grape juice. Then they hit Shine.”

I then sent Lesley a question just to be sure.

“This is a weird question but my friends and I had a pretty big debate about Shaq. Several of them were arguing how many beers Shaq could drink in a night. Given his size the possible number of beers escalated to dizzying heights. But I felt the argument was moot because Shaq is probably a Cristal guy. Mabye some Grey Goose. But he's not wasting his calories on beer. Am I off base here? Thanks.”

Couple of things – I misspelled maybe (mabye) – even though the website gave me a chance to double-check my comment. It wouldn’t be an attempt at journalism for me if it were not half-assed.

Also clearly I know he drinks Cristal and Grey Goose based on the above post. So either I’m lame or a deceitful ass who is trying to make himself look good. Probably both.

They reply: “To be honest with you, although I've seen Shaq out and about, I never noticed what he drinks! I will look next time and let y'all know!”

Oh well. I’m no further along than when we started and just wasted 300 something words.

2. I can accept that Shaq does not drink beer and press on with this exercise because it’s awesome. But then comes the issue of keeping track. Counting beers is for high school kids, college students* you don’t want to hang out with, and in general a certain type of personality. For example if the 2001 Lakers went to a keg party Kobe Bryant would count beers. Shaq would not. This is the second biggest reason I did not try to contact Shaq to answer my question. The first is fear.

1. How much does Shaq weigh? The following exchange occurred during my sophomore year of college:

“I’m so messed up. I just drank a fifth of vodka.” – Pre frosh
“I don’t believe you.” – His host.

I bring this up because it is precisely how I would react if Shaq told me he weighs 325 pounds. How much does he really weigh? Let’s go with 375 pounds. And that may be a low guess.
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As we move forward let's start with the chart on the right from the Greater Dallas Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse. Unfortunately the chart gave up after 240 pounds. Now just being fat does not mean a person can absorb more alcohol. It has to be muscle. And say what you want about Shaq, but the Diesel still has plenty of muscle. So that is going to help his cause. Therefore given Shaq's weight and body make up I’m guessing his blood alcohol contcentration (BAC) would be .11 after 10 drinks. I followed the chart’s advice and subtracted .01 for each hour of drinking. This in turn helped me determine that Shaq would have a BAC of .12 if he killed 20 beers in 10 hours. Long story short if the Big Aristotle decided to kick back and drink for 20 hours I’m sure he could down 50 beers. Especially if he was drinking light beers. I think he could even throw back 35 Ice Houses, keeping in mind that seven is a lot for mere mortals. Regardless Shaq has nothing on this sumo legend.

When I say “college students you don’t want to hang out with” I have to include my former self in that demographic. That’s depressing.