Hawkeye tailgate crackdown? We'll see.

The water's nearly boiling in Corridor water coolers this week from the debate about the University of Iowa's plans to force folks to tone down tailgating this year.

UI officials started talking in July about cracking down on excessive drinking on game days. This week, they unveiled their plan.

They'll beef up enforcement of open container and drinking laws, establish vehicle checkpoints to catch drunk drivers and give tailgaters in university lots only an hour to finish their drinks after the game is over.

The Think Before You Drink initiative is meant to encourage safe, responsible and legal alcohol use on game day, to allow the majority of tailgaters to continue to enjoy the festivities with a few friends and a few beers, while getting a handle on the excessive and dangerous drinking that's become an expected, if unwelcome, part of the atmosphere.

Any Hawk fan will tell you, some tailgaters party ridiculously hard. Most can tell you stories about ducking thrown beer cans or stepping over passed-out fans. Even anti-21 leader Matt Pfaltzgraf, campaign director for Vote Yes for Student Safety, has been railing against the UI lately for turning a blind eye to the game-day excesses:

“I love tailgating and Hawkeye football with all my heart, but when you have 7-year-olds bartending, middle-aged people fighting and mothers of two winning chugging contests and the city and school encourage it, what kind of message does that send to someone who is 18 and has only been on campus for a few weeks?” Pfaltzgraf asked me in an e-mail a month or so ago.

His point, of course, is the old one about removing the log from your own eye before complaining about the splinter in your neighbor's eye. Or, to put it more plainly: Let underage people back into bars.

But he has a point.

Even UI officials admit that many of the Think Before You Drink rules aren't new, it's just that now they're going to be enforced.

That's going to be more difficult, now that fans have come to expect “anything goes.”

Cracking down on violations of the open container law and establishing “zero tolerance for public urination” sound like great ideas. But by this point, it might take the National Guard to enforce them.

Still, I hope the UI is serious about this.

On game days, Iowa City is a drinking destination for people who don't ever intend to go to the game. Drinking destination? Wait, that's familiar.

And the UI faces the same credibility crisis that bar owners do if they don't manage to walk the talk when it comes to alcohol.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@gazcomm.com