Stadium-wide alcohol for college football is growing fast. So, why are Iowa schools resisting?

At college football games, alcohol doesn't belong just at tailgates and bars anymore. 

A decade ago, you could count on two hands the number of top-tier Division I schools selling booze to their football masses.

Heading into the 2018 season, 52 of 129 Football Bowl Subdivision programs have turned on the taps, national media research and additional Des Moines Register reporting shows. Oklahoma State is thinking about becoming No. 53.

But what about at Kinnick and Jack Trice Stadiums? When it comes to selling stadium-wide alcohol in Iowa, the dilly-dally still trumps the "dilly dilly."

Both of the Hawkeye State’s large-school athletic directors, Iowa’s Gary Barta and Iowa State’s Jamie Pollard, have told the Register this spring they don’t foresee changing their current football alcohol policies in the near future.

“I would never begin selling beer or alcohol because of increased revenue,” Barta told Hawk Central. “I watch what’s going on around the country. I’m aware.

"If the tipping point ever happens nationally, then it would be more about customer service, not about trying to make an extra dollar.”

Currently, sales of beer and wine are limited to those in suites and at the soon-to-be-completed Kinnick Edge outdoor club in Iowa City.

A similar setup exists for VIPs in suites and at the Sukup End Zone Club in Ames. Ditto for the Northern Iowa suites at the UNI-Dome in Cedar Falls.

RELATED: Here's one place in Iowa where all fans can buy beer at a college sports event

Some of Iowa’s Big Ten Conference compatriots — Maryland, Minnesota, Ohio State and Purdue — have embraced expansion in recent seasons.

The Boilermakers just wrapped their first full-alcohol football season and had almost $400,000 of gross revenue in concourse sales, according to the Lafayette (Ind.) Journal & Courier. Ohio State brought home $1.35 million in beer sales last season, the Columbus Dispatch reported.

Barta said his tipping point would be if Iowa was “the last school that’s not” selling beer to of-age fans. Some national observers don't see it the same way.

“We are to the tipping point in intercollegiate athletics,” said Rick Jones, the head of Charleston, South Carolina-based FishBait Marketing, who counts the Atlantic Coast Conference and Capital One Financial among his high-profile clients. “(Programs) need the revenue, they need to increase attendance. They need to increase the validity of their experiences.

“HDTV has gotten so good. The parking is free in my driveway. The bathroom is eight steps away, I have all the cold beer I can drink in my fridge and, if this game is bad, there are another 25 games I can see.

“They have got to create a better experience in the stadium. And like it or not, alcohol is part of our social fabric.”

If that’s the case, then why are schools in Iowa leaving parts of their stadiums untapped?

INTERACTIVE MAP: Find out where stadium-wide beer is sold at colleges

The perception of culture matters

True or not, one could do worse than presuming that Iowa's aw-shucks, wholesome value system can drive big-dollar decision-making.

Troy Dannen understands that old "Iowa Nice" chestnut. He’s a Marshalltown native and spent 49 years living in the state before becoming the athletic director at Tulane University in New Orleans in late 2015.

He was in charge at Northern Iowa for the eight seasons prior.

In 2011, he had told the Register that thinking out of the box and mining national trends for revenue streams was part of the job at a smaller school. He couldn’t offer up that concept in Cedar Falls, but the idea itself was there. 

When he moved to Tulane, alcohol was already a given. Beer, wine and daiquiris are available for all adult ticketholders in football, basketball and baseball.

The school last fall fully embraced its own Green Wave Beer label, a move seen as nothing more than another branding opportunity.

Of course, this is New Orleans, where the French Quarter beckons and two professional teams, the NFL’s Saints and NBA's Pelicans, play a few miles away.

Without alcohol availability, the environment would be detrimental to the culture, he said.

Compare that party-life standard with Iowa, and the expectations are different.

Plus, maintaining a set of values is a concept Dannen says weighs heavily in decisions of perception.

“Iowa has stood steeped in tradition in so many ways — (high school) sports, the 99 counties concept, non-reorganization of boys’ and girls’ sports. It’s part of the culture,” he said. “In some respects, the culture in Iowa is unlike anybody else. I fully understand why … you don’t necessarily play ‘follow the leader.’”

Iowa State wasn’t following the Big 12 Conference’s Texas and West Virginia in 2015, when the Sukup end zone project allowed a larger portion of premium ticketholders access to alcohol. At the time, senior associate athletic director Chris Jorgensen saw it as a “premium amenity” and not a “trial run” for stadium-wide booze.

Pollard further touted a family-friendly niche in a 2015 TV interview, and he said looking at gameday police reports showed him there were “enough idiots that do things that make you go ‘My gosh, what were they thinking?' And to put on top of that alcohol throughout the stadium would get rid of any moral high ground."

Add in the current buzz around Matt Campbell’s football program, which brought in more than 40,000 season-ticket sales and set a new school average attendance record in 2017 (57,931), and Iowa State isn’t hurting for any kind of cultural booster shot.

It’s why Pollard’s email response when asked about the Cyclones’ alcohol policies isn’t a surprise.

“Our position has not changed,” he wrote. “We are not interested in changing our current position on alcohol sales during home athletic events.”

Public relations victories remain important considerations, too, said Jones, the national marketer. Schools will want increases in revenue, but not at the cost of a cultural black eye, and especially among budgets that eclipsed $78 million for Iowa State and $116 million for Iowa in 2016, according to a USA TODAY Network database.

“Not allowing alcohol across the whole stadium can be a way of patting yourself on the back,” Jones said.

But the in-game experience is mattering more

Such revenue possibilities are not trifles, however. Realities of modern sports viewing have hit NCAA football hard this past season. Overall attendance dropped to 42,203 fans per game nationwide, the lowest figure since 1997. And that dip of 1,409 fans on average from the year before was the largest decline in 34 years, CBS Sports reported.

As a result, expect every revenue source to get increased scrutiny, especially as a premium fan experience is in higher demand.

They have to be on the mind of Panthers athletic director David Harris, when a school such as UNI receives 49 percent of its revenue ($8,687,208 in 2016, to be exact) as a subsidy through government aid, student fees or assistance from the university’s general fund.

It’s partly why the school has experimented with   its Panther Patio, a specific area inside the basketball team's McLeod Center, where anyone of legal age in attendance could purchase and consume alcohol for the first time this past season.

The patio originated as a perk for members of the Panthers’ Scholarship Club, but opening up those gates to all fans appeared to be a hit.

“During games, I’d make a point of it to go and see people up there, and I would get positive feedback that people appreciated the access,” Harris said, though it’s too early to know the immediate revenue impact of the move.

Putting a similar patio setup inside the UNI-Dome for football is relatable in theory, Harris said, although factors such as size of crowd, length and time of games and the tailgating atmospheres make them “two different animals.”

The large-school recipe: 'Sleep, creep, leap'

For all the perceived numerical pressure of football alcohol sales, just 18 percent of schools in what are known as the Power Five conferences (ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac 12, SEC) have taken the plunge.

Spelled out, that’s a dozen universities (Boston College, Louisville, Miami [Florida], Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Wake Forest, Texas, West Virginia, Maryland, Minnesota, Ohio State and Purdue) of a possible 65.

The SEC, for its part, has a blanket ban on an alcohol sales free-for-all. Commissioner Greg Sankey said last year at the league’s spring meetings that a rule change did not seem likely in the near future.

Register research showed that more than a dozen other schools which haven't gone stadium-wide (many are in the Pac-12) allow a “Panther Patio” concept for larger groups of fans but limit consumption of alcohol to those designated spaces.

Increasing numbers of schools are becoming aware of the need for premium food and drink, Jones said. Iowa State and Iowa are just two prime examples, with the Cyclones’ end zone club opening in 2015 and the Hawkeyes’ Kinnick Edge project, which includes 1,570 outdoor club seats opening in time for the 2018 season, offering expanded food and beverage menus, too.

“We’ve polled just about everybody, and the under-40 fan expects phenomenal food and drink at every experience,” Jones said. “You better have that. The old days of popcorn and hot dogs, if you want that young crowd to come, are gone. Younger adults are economizing on everything but food and drink.”

So it makes sense that culture-conscious schools with big budgets and bigger profiles take steps such as almost-club-level atmospheres and limited craft beverage experiences to appease that growing segment of fans. As it grows, Jones predicts more schools will tiptoe further to the edge of embracing alcohol for the masses.

“I do believe it to be a bridge,” Jones said. “It’s kind of a three-step process: Sleep, creep, then leap. Right now is the middle ground for a lot of places to test and see.”

And as the years tick on, expect the momentum for full alcohol access to chug along.

“I don’t know if it’s a fast train,” Dannen said, “but it’s a one-way track.”