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Beer options will be ample at Kinnick Stadium

cigaretteman

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May 29, 2001
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Beer afficionados, your choices at Kinnick Stadium this football season won’t be limited to mass-produced corporate brew.


Eastern Iowa beermakers Backpocket, Big Grove and SingleSpeed will be sold at Iowa Hawkeyes football games, starting with the Sept. 4 season-opener.


For those with, er, broader tastes? Bud Light, Busch Light, Coors Light, Michelob Ultra and Bud Light Seltzer also will be available. Wine, too.


The University of Iowa announced in June that it would become the eighth Big Ten Conference school to sell beer and wine at its sporting events. Iowa senior associate athletics director Matt Henderson spoke Tuesday about what fans can expect, alcohol-wise, at Kinnick.


“The concession stands in the concourses that we have always had will remain and those stands will be your standard concession fares,” Henderson said. “But we have utilized the spaces on the east and west concourses, kind of the entries into the stadium, and have added the beer and wine sales to those locations.


“There’s 31 additional locations that have been added throughout the stadium that we’ll be able to implement.


“The majority of the sales will be 16-ounce cans in the north end because we have just completed the renovations there. There is more ability to do draft (beer) sales on the upper level, the third and the main concourse. But the majority is canned.”


Rules: Customers can purchase a maximum of two drinks at a time. All customers must present an ID. Domestic beer will cost $8.50, premium beer $9.50. Wine is $8. Alcohol service will be halted before the start of the fourth quarter.


Big Grove and Backpocket are based in Johnson County. SingleSpeed is from Waterloo-Cedar Falls.


“We had them in the premium areas already,” Henderson said, referring to the press box and suites seats in which people have been able to purchase alcohol since the 2006 season.


“Our concessionaire (Aramark) was really the one responsible for the selection and the sales.”

 
Am I the only one a little nervous about this? Maybe it’s just all the years of going to games with my family and seeing people throw up from drinking onto people in front of them. But I think there was already quite a bit of drinking going on in Kinnick already. But what the hell I guess right?
 
Am I the only one a little nervous about this? Maybe it’s just all the years of going to games with my family and seeing people throw up from drinking onto people in front of them. But I think there was already quite a bit of drinking going on in Kinnick already. But what the hell I guess right?
It will be fine.
 
Am I the only one a little nervous about this? Maybe it’s just all the years of going to games with my family and seeing people throw up from drinking onto people in front of them. But I think there was already quite a bit of drinking going on in Kinnick already. But what the hell I guess right?

Iowans can handle their liquor
 
Am I the only one a little nervous about this? Maybe it’s just all the years of going to games with my family and seeing people throw up from drinking onto people in front of them. But I think there was already quite a bit of drinking going on in Kinnick already. But what the hell I guess right?
Nothing bad ever happened mixing sports and alcohol…😉
 
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Am I the only one a little nervous about this? Maybe it’s just all the years of going to games with my family and seeing people throw up from drinking onto people in front of them. But I think there was already quite a bit of drinking going on in Kinnick already. But what the hell I guess right?
Pretty much everywhere it’s been implemented, problems have gone down. For one, you no longer have to cram in the last 3 while standing in the ticket line. And also, I would bet the amount of people willing stand in line for a quarter to pay for an $8 Coors Light aren’t as many as you would think.
 
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In 2016 Pitt started allowing alcohol sales. Here’s some quotes from a story about it. This isn’t a big deal at all.


In an interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Barnes claimed that selling alcohol in the stadium would help curb binge drinking, citing a similar tactic at West Virginia University, which started selling beer in 2011.

“We think there’s a direct correlation to our alcohol sales and incidents going down,” said Michael Fragale, WVU’s associate athletic director for communications, in an interview with The Pitt News last April. That same year, though, the school ended its “pass out” policy, which allowed fans to leave the stadium at halftime and re-enter at a later time.

Before making the decision, Pitt spoke to every Power Five conference school and several other non-Power Five universities that currently serve alcohol to the general public. Aside from the outlier of WVU, most schools, Bowman said, have seen no increase or decrease in incidents after beer sales.

The University of Texas at San Antonio also hosts games out of a multi-use venue, the Alamodome, and began selling beers with its inception in 2011.

“It wasn’t a choice of ours, it was something that was just always done [at the Alamodome],” spokesperson Jim Goodman said, adding that UTSA doesn’t share in any of the profits made from beer sales. “It’s no different than if they went to a concert down there if they were of age, and they can buy it just like anyone else can.”


Goodman also explained that while the school researched whether or not in-stadium beer sales would increase student misbehavior, it ended up being a non issue.

“We had talked to other schools that were in similar situations, and all the feedback we had gotten was that there were few, if any, issues,” he said. “We’ve pretty much found that to be true. We’ve had very few instances of anybody being disorderly because of alcohol sales at the games.”

The University of Minnesota, too, saw its rate of incidents stay virtually the same. The school dealt with 57 alcohol-related incidents in 2011, before sales, and 59 in 2013, after sales. That number was already down from 77 in 2010, according to The Star Tribune.

In Pitt’s first game this fall against Villanova, there were no arrests involving alcohol, which is down from one arrest last year at the opening game against Youngstown State, according to Pittsburgh Department of Safety’s Assistant Public Information Officer Emily Schaffer.
 
Someone in the athletic department. Makes sense to me since a can could be a dangerous flying object.
Yeah, that makes sense for cans. I was thinking of aluminum pints. When I’ve had those they just take the lids off and hand them to you. They would spill too much to hurt anyone If thrown.

All that said, who is going to throw away a full can of beer you paid $8.50 for?
 
Am I the only one a little nervous about this? Maybe it’s just all the years of going to games with my family and seeing people throw up from drinking onto people in front of them. But I think there was already quite a bit of drinking going on in Kinnick already. But what the hell I guess right?
I am not nervous at all. In all likelihood, the people forking over $10 per beer or whatever it is will only have one to three beers, and are not getting shitfaced tailgating. The people who are getting shitfaced tailgating to the point they would hurl inside Kinnick have their hulls pierced before entering, and whether Iowa profits from selling them another beer or two is immaterial to those fans' outcomes on gameday.
 
I heard the Krause plaza will be open and gated off as part of the stadium. Any truth to that?

I think that was the plan for the area in the initial design, but for some reason they never followed through w/ it. I thought it would be a nice area to get a little space at half time and smoke a bowl.
 
Am I the only one a little nervous about this? Maybe it’s just all the years of going to games with my family and seeing people throw up from drinking onto people in front of them. But I think there was already quite a bit of drinking going on in Kinnick already. But what the hell I guess right?
I've seen it before at other places just like iowa...guess what, behavior actually improves.

The real big thing it cuts down on is binge drinking right before going in. Previously you'd have people take some shots or pounds some beers before going in so they can keep the buzz for three hours. But, often they didn't realize how much they would drink. So 45 minutes later it all hit them and they do dumb things. With beer sales that binge drinking need goes away cause you can buy a couple inside the stadium, keep your buzz going and not fear falling over in front of a cop
 
In Pitt’s first game this fall against Villanova, there were no arrests involving alcohol, which is down from one arrest last year at the opening game against Youngstown State, according to Pittsburgh Department of Safety’s Assistant Public Information Officer Emily Schaffer.
Too be fair, were then any fans at that game to arrest?
 
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