Get your hot dogs, chips…and beer?

When someone goes to a football game courtesy of the National Football League, more often than not, they will see someone who has taken advantage of the concession stang a chance that they are going to consume something to drink at the game. For many fans their choice of beverage is one that contains alcohol, which is also a big factor in revenue for each respective stadium and the team that it houses.

In the nation, there are only 23 athletic programs that sell alcohol at their home games at the collegiate level, including prestigious universities as the University of Miami, University of Minnesota, and West Virginia University in Morgantown, WV. The athletic program, headed by athletic director Oliver Luck, the father of Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck, has seen it be helpful both economically and safety wise to his program and went into detail in an interview with FIU Student Media.

“We had a different situation here that other schools do not usually have,” Luck said. “We used to allow students and fans to exit the stadium at halftime or whenever they pleased and come back into the game which was costly with having to check people’s bags a second time and getting their ‘Buzz back on’ then returning to the stadium. It did not create a pretty sight.”

Luck also believes that the selling of alcohol at the games could possibly be an extra incentive to get students in from the tailgates but it depends on the situation of the school itself.

“Through sponsorships with Miller/Coors, Anheuser-Busch and a local brewery in Morgantown Brewing Company, we are near $750,000 in profit,” Luck added. “We do it through the concession group we use called Sodexo. It helps us control alcohol consumption and gives us a bit of extra revenue which isn’t bad.”

FIU Student Media reached out to the Athletic Department at the University of Minnesota, who was one of the only schools to report a loss in selling alcohol financially. A response was never returned.

Some of the bigger conferences that do not currently allow alcohol to be sold at any sporting event are the Southeastern Conference and the Atlantic Coast Conference, excluding the University of Miami Hurricanes, with their games being at Sun Life Stadium, where alcohol is sold for all Miami Dolphins games.

“There is no conference rule but it is up to the institution. We don’t have a ruling either way,” Courtney Archer, Associate Commissioner for Public Affairs for Conference-USA said about alcohol within the conference.

 In regards to it being possible to grab a cold Corona Extra with lime, a Yuengling, or an Anheuser-Busch product at an upcoming football or basketball game at FIU would be a stretch, but not something I believe is without of reach within the next few years at Alfonso Field at FIU Stadium, the US. Century Bank Arena with the Lime court or the FIU Baseball Stadium to be possible.

You do not have to be 21 to see that the student section of FIU Stadium, if not a majority of the stadium in general, has not really been at or near capacity in the past few games. In my opinion, it could bring some students in from the tailgates to watch a dismal football team or a basketball team who due to grades cannot play in the postseason.

I don’t think that after I turn 21 I would complain if I could grab a cold one when I was at the game to watch the Panthers play.

FIU Executive Director of Sports and Entertainment Pete Garcia denied speaking with FIU Student Media on the issue of alcohol at sporting events.