There's a good chance that, by the time you read this, some University of Illinois students will have already cracked their first beer, racked their first round of cups for early-morning beer pong and mixed their Irish coffees.

And, certainly, some are going to keep at it all day.

Two weeks remain before the geniune St. Patrick's Day (religious and Irish holiday), but Campustown businesses, police and university officials will be prepared for today's "Unofficial St. Patrick's Day" crowd.

UI students – and guests from other colleges – have been celebrating the "holiday" since 1996, when it was conceived by a bar owner to recover the income he would not receive on the real St. Patrick's Day, which usually falls on the UI's spring break.

More recently, students and bar managers at other Illinois campuses have been initiating their own spinoffs of the infamous UI event.

Here's a look at a few:

Southern Illinois University in Carbondale celebrated its "Unofficial St. Patrick's Day" two weeks ago.

"People go ahead and they do have Unofficial St. Paddy's Day, but I think more so what it amounts to is just a couple people going out," said student body president Markus King.

Students go to downtown bars in Carbondale and there are probably a few extra apartment parties, King said, but "nothing where people are going to be out of control."

Lt. Harold Tucker of the SIU campus police agreed. From a law enforcement standpoint, it was no different than any other weekend.

"They do what they do, and it's really not any different other than they put notice out there that they're going to do it," Tucker said.

The real issue, Tucker and King both said, is the campus' Halloween celebration. But even that has been milder in recent years, Tucker said.

Eastern Illinois University last weekend initiated its first attempt at Unofficial in Charleston, student body president Michelle Murphy said.

"This is really the first year the bars and the campus community tried to do something comparable," Murphy said.

Campus bars offered specials on what would be considered Irish drinks, she said, and some students participated – but probably not as many as the bars would have liked.

"I think that they're trying to kind of slowly create some kind of mock tradition," Murphy said.

Campus police did not notice.

"If they did, it didn't amount to much," said EIU Chief of Police Adam Due.

To compare EIU's event to the UI's: "It's not to that point yet," Murphy said.

Illinois State University did not get its Unofficial St. Patrick's Day going, said student body president David Marquis, but there was an adaptation.

Some students there organized an Unofficial New Year's Eve before winter break. Their theory was the same: Students are away from Bloomington-Normal during the official New Year's Eve, so why not have a mock re-creation before they leave?

And there have been stirs on Facebook as ISU students try to organize a campuswide April Fool's Day party, Marquis said.

The university administration has taken notice.

"Even when it first got launched, most of the upper administration knew instantly that something would happen on April 1 or prior to New Year's," Marquis said.

ISU officials have taken steps to remind students of the problems of campuswide binge drinking events, the liabilities they face and potential consequences.

"There's really nothing they can do to stop these things, but they want to make sure that the people that are hosting these things do it in a responsible way," Marquis said.

The UI campus' Unofficial St. Patrick's Day might reign supreme among the premature celebrations on college campuses – whether or not that is something to be proud of. Students from campuses all over Illinois have been known to travel to Champaign-Urbana for the daylong – sometimes weekend-long – event.

ISU students have "decided that that's probably a U of I thing," Marquis said of why an Unofficial St. Patrick's Day there never got off the ground.

The story is the same in Charleston.

"Most of our students, I think, probably go to U of I," Due said.

In fact, Murphy said it's so common for EIU students to make the roughly 1-hour trip north that EIU administrators have reminded their students that the same repercussions they would face at their school still apply to when they travel to Champaign-Urbana.

Administrators "tell our students to be careful and remind them that a drinking ticket there still has consequences here," Murphy said.

Law enforcement agencies in Champaign-Urbana have said that out-of-town participants often cause more trouble than do UI students. In recent years, the majority of notices to appear in court have gone to non-UI students.

"Hopefully you won't see too many ISU students acting up too much," Marquis said.