Well, it finally happened.
Alcohol is coming to the people at Jack Trice Stadium and Hilton Coliseum.
No longer tucked away in the elite enclaves of the southeast end zone or Johnny’s, the unwashed masses will now have access to “beer, wine and pre-packaged cocktails” across the concourses at Cyclone football and basketball games starting this fall.
Despite longtime resistance from Iowa State and athletics director Jamie Pollard to such a change, it began to feel inevitable as the financial pressures of modern collegiate sports continued to mount in recent years. As Pollard told me last month, most of the “low-hanging fruit” for generating new revenue had already been picked. Selling booze to tens of thousands of people who want to buy it every sun-splashed Saturday at Jack Trice or those cold winter nights at Hilton, well, that’s pluckable and lucrative right there.
The money involved isn’t going to solve the approximately $75 million deficit Iowa State projects to run over the next five years, but it will help, even if only incrementally. At this point, leaving that money — projected to be about a million bucks a year — on the table just wasn’t fiscally responsible.
If your bar tab keeps going up, the bartender is eventually going to want you to sign over that uncashed check in your pocket.
As much as the move will bring in added revenue, it does come with costs.
Increasingly crowded concourses. Likely longer restroom lines.
Potentially more behavioral issues, however I think it’s fair to argue that in either direction as people may now be less likely to “front-load” their consumption when there’s a steady supply available inside the venue. We’ll see.
Really, though, what I think will be the biggest cultural shift from the decision will be the “no re-entry” policy. Part of what has defined the Jack Trice Stadium vibe over the decades has been fans’ opportunity to leave at halftime to hit the tailgate lots and return to the stadium to finish watching the game. About 4,000 fans leave and come back each game, Pollard recently told me.
It was an old-school quirk and a rare perk among big-time college football programs. A bit of vintage charm that is being sacrificed to make way for spirits.
Its disappearance is, frankly, probably overdue, but I also do think it speaks to something greater we’re losing in college sports as the dollars reach higher and higher and everything becomes more professionalized and corporate.
When you go to NFL and NBA games, they all feel vaguely similar. There’s little to distinguish one atmosphere and environment from another. There may be different signage and chants, but they’re all built to maximize profits and efficiency.
They lack personality, character and, if I’m being totally honest, soul.
Applebee’s can adorn its walls with out-of-the-Amazon-box jerseys of local legends, but we all know it’s still an Applebee’s. The same in Ames as it is in Oxford or East Lansing or Raleigh.
What’s made college sports so successful and beloved over the decades is its individuality. The historical oddities, the bizarre idiosyncrasies and undeniable sense of place is a huge part of what has made college sports the cultural behemoth it is today.
And the Jack Trice Stadium experience gets a little flattened by this move.
That doesn’t mean it’s getting worse — and there are easy arguments that it’s getting better — but it does mean it’s getting more of the same. There will be less to differentiate going to a Cyclone game than before.
The re-entry policy was, and again I’m going to be honest here, small-time. It’s not how the biggest and best and most lucrative athletics departments have operated in a long time. It smacked more of small-town high school football than high-stakes Big 12 competition.
But, ya know what? I’m not so sure that’s a bad thing. Retaining some quaint aspects that separated you from the rest of the ruthless pack isn’t all bad. At a place like Ames and Iowa State, which so often embraces the values and virtues of an idealized small-town past, it did create something of a truer, unique community.
It may not work at places like Penn State or Alabama or USC, but that’s kind of the point. It worked for a long time at Iowa State, and it made Cyclone football at Jack Trice Stadium something different.
Progress, though, waits for no man nor football program, and the bill is coming due. Which made a decision like this inevitable, and, really, the right one.
Which seems to be, more or less, the reaction from Iowa State fans.
“I have been going in/out of the stadium since the 1980s,” Jon Pagel, a member of the Register’s Cyclone sports text group, wrote me. “When I was a kid to young adult, it was a normal thing to do.
“There will be plenty of people complaining about this, but a lot of us have known it is dumb for the university not to make money on alcohol sales. ISU needs every dollar they are able to get.”
The move might actually make the football environment better, too. Which is not to say “drunker and louder,” but actually more butts in seats.
“I’ve been going to JTS since it opened,” Jim Crawford, another text-group member, wrote. “The people who leave and return are slamming a couple and coming back, usually late. Bad for fans, bad for the team. Also, tons of smuggling (of alcohol into the stadium).
“This is the grown-up approach, common in virtually every venue in the country.”
Which, again, is something to both applaud and lament.
Jack Trice Stadium will still have its hillsides (which are remaining dry, by the way). “Juicy Wiggle” will still make people go wild. “Sweet Caroline” isn’t going anywhere, nor is the incredible tailgating.
Re-entry will be recalled in the years and decades to come as a historical oddity. A weird relic of the past, like the sideline hot tub of the 1990s or the helmet car of the 1980s.
It’ll be remembered as something that helped make Cyclone football, well, uniquely Cyclone football.
Cheers.
Iowa State columnist Travis Hines has covered the Cyclones for the Des Moines Register and Ames Tribune since 2012. Contact him at thines@amestrib.com or (515) 284-8000. Follow him on X at @TravisHines21.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Alcohol sales right move, but there are costs for Iowa State | Hines
Reporting by Travis Hines, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
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By Travis Hines, Des Moines Register | USA TODAY Network
