Fans of professional sports teams would not have noticed anything out of the ordinary at Milan Puskar Stadium’s concession stands on a recent sunny Saturday afternoon. Domestic and imported beer, wine and a hard cider advertised as gluten-free were all for sale during West Virginia’s football game against Maryland.
But these options were actually unusual. West Virginia is in the small minority of college teams that sell alcohol at football games to general-admission ticketholders, which it has done since 2011. And it is one of very few in the five most prominent conferences to do so, although many more make alcohol available in suites and to holders of other kinds of premium tickets.
“I’m a traditionalist,” said Alan Cage, 65, a West Virginia fan who sold Coca-Cola at the old Mountaineer Field when he was a boy. “It’s college football, and I grew up with no beer in the stands.”
But he was quick to add, “From an economic standpoint, I can understand.”
In an era of seven-figure coaching salaries and demands for more resources for athletes, universities are always looking for ways to increase revenue. But college football is also eager to keep up attendance, which averaged 44,190 last season, the lowest figure since at least 2003, according to the NCAA. In the era of high-definition home televisions, fan experience is the focus of many athletic directors’ offices.
In that environment, alcohol sales are a moneymaker. West Virginia’s athletic director, Shane Lyons, said last month that “approximately $500,000 a year just in beer comes back to us.”
Now more colleges appear headed in West Virginia’s direction. Before this season, Texas and Maryland announced that they would join a roster of programs in the so-called Big 5 conferences that sell beer at games, a list that also includes Minnesota, Colorado, Wake Forest, Miami, Syracuse and Louisville. (The SEC prohibits its members from selling alcohol to the general public.)
Maryland introduced a one-year trial period for football and basketball games, to be evaluated after the basketball season, after the university’s athletics council voted, 16-1, to recommend it.
“I feel like we’ve been a pilot program — people have seen it work,” West Virginia’s Lyons said, noting that Maryland and Texas had contacted West Virginia for advice before deciding to begin beer sales this fall.
Not everyone is comfortable. West Virginia’s president, E. Gordon Gee, who as a Mormon does not drink, said he was reluctant to maintain the policy when he returned to the university last year but was persuaded to do so by the Board of Governors.
“I’m sometimes conflicted about it,” he said, “because I do believe one of the main issues confronting universities is alcohol abuse — binge drinking.” Last year, a West Virginia student died with a blood-alcohol level of more than six times the legal limit after a suspected case of fraternity hazing.
Emily Golembiewski, a fan experience expert at Aecom, which specializes in financing, managing and consulting on facilities, was also cautious.
“Whether it’s alcohol or any other improvements,” she said, “it’s important to keep some of what people love about college and not make it a mini-NFL.”
Selling beer is more common at colleges in the so-called Group of Five, the top-tier football conferences outside the Big 5. Left out of the biggest television agreements, the members of this group, including Conference USA and the Mid-American and American Athletic Conferences, are experiencing budget squeezes as they try not to fall too far behind teams in richer conferences like the SEC, the Big Ten and the Pacific-12.
“All of us in the Group of 5, we really have to work hard to get folks to come” to games, said Dave Nottke, the associate athletic director for development at Toledo, which sells alcohol at home games.
Yet a recent paper published in the Journal of Sports Economics “found no evidence” that selling beer at football games affected attendance or revenue. E.F. Stephenson, an economics professor at Berry College and an author of the paper, said he guessed that it generated revenue but did not affect attendance.
Many colleges that sell alcohol at games contend that doing so discourages binge drinking by allowing fans to pace themselves. West Virginia’s campus police department reported sharp declines in incident reports and arrests on home football Saturdays from 2010 to 2014.
Usually the decision to sell or not sell is a response to specific circumstances, including location, game day logistics and culture.
Virginia Tech, a member of the top-tier ACC in out-of-the-way Blacksburg, Virginia, sells alcohol to only a small percentage of fans in a premium section, said the Hokies’ athletic director, Whit Babcock. But Cincinnati, where Babcock last worked and which plays in the American Athletic Conference, sells to everyone, in part because it felt that fans accustomed to attending home games for one of Cincinnati’s professional teams would expect it.
At West Virginia, the introduction of general-admission alcohol sales was paired with the elimination of so-called passouts. Though the term is not a deliberate pun, passouts — which allowed fans to leave and re-enter the stadium during Mountaineers games — contributed to binge drinking in the parking lots at halftime.
“I used to park my motor home outside the stadium,” Jay Gerber, 65, said as he stood at his seat near the 50-yard line. “Was nice to come and go.”
Unlike many college football stadiums, Milan Puskar Stadium is hugged on most sides by parking lots. It is nearly impossible to attend a game without at least walking past fans who are tailgating.
The main lot belongs to the university hospital, but on a recent Saturday, the sign for patient drop-off instead pointed to an area crowded by motor homes and tents where a state law banning public drinking was flouted on a wide scale and some fans wore T-shirts describing Morgantown as a “Drinking Town With a Football Problem.”
“Compared to others, this is a destination,” Kevin Pierson, 32, who grew up attending University of Texas games in Austin, said of the scene. “The lot here is front and center. At other schools, it’s more pockets.”
Many fans who were drinking outside the stadium said they did not plan to drink inside. Gooch Gourley, 45, downed a shot of liquor with three friends from a shot ski — a ski to which four shot glasses have been attached, for simultaneous consumption — before bemoaning the in-stadium beer prices of $8 or $9 a cup.
“Nobody buys in there because it’s too expensive,” he said. (University officials said the price was deliberately high to discourage overconsumption.)
Dave Taylor, 69, who said he had missed only two Mountaineers home games in 43 years — one for a fishing tournament, one to go hunting — said he would not buy beers inside because “I have them out here.”
But the Maryland game provided ideal conditions for beer sales — 70-degree weather and a blowout by the home team (the Mountaineers won, 45-6) — and not everyone abstained. More than 30,000 beers were sold at Milan Puskar, according to an official at Sodexo, the food and facilities manager that handles concessions. That translated to well over $100,000 for the university, which takes a 52 percent cut.
“People like to drink at football games,” said Paul Cusumano, 25, a Maryland fan who was standing in line at a concessions booth in the third quarter, when his team trailed by several touchdowns. “They drink no matter what.”
About the Author
