Well, so much for my dream of seeing Bret Bielema immortalized in one of those Coors Light coach’s press conference commercials. In fact, those delightful ads are set to disappear from Badger football altogether. Despite the appeals of the athletic department, Chancellor Biddy Martin declined to renew advertising contracts with the parent companies of the only big three I wouldn’t mind bailing out: Miller, Bud and Coors.

To be fair, the decision to refuse $425,000 worth of advertising revenue is not as costly as it sounds. Advertising is handled by an outside contractor, and the university is paid either a lump sum or percentage of revenue, whichever is greater. So under the worst case scenario, the move will “only” end up costing the university just north of a quarter million dollars.

That’s not to say we don’t need it. In my opinion, anyone who turns down almost 30 full-ride scholarships for in-state students is stupid to the point of criminal. The more dangerous idea here, however, is that by removing beer advertising from a small sliver of the media viewed by most students, we will be able to make even the tiniest of dents in destructive drinking behavior.

I know plenty of binge drinkers, and not one of them has been driven to the beer bong by three frogs and an iguana. There may well be issues with alcohol marketed to underage students, but the factors at play in binge drinking at UW-Madison go far beyond 30-second clips that air five or six times every Saturday. The social cultures of the university and Wisconsin at large are far greater contributors.

The same logic can be applied to a Harvard (screw them) study that partially spurred “the” Ohio State University to institute a similar policy in 2003. It found, in short, that college-aged sports fans binge drink more than non-sports fans. Rather than chasing the chicken-or-egg scenario of whether there are beer commercials during football games because beer drinkers watch football or because watching football makes you a beer drinker, the most rational explanation seems to be the link between alcohol and culture.

Before a football game, people drink. That is (currently) the way of Wisconsin, and efforts to address the notion that you should come cheer on blitzes blitzed will do far more for ending binge drinking than taking down a couple of banners. Although it may be unpopular with students, show-and-blow is an example of a much more lucid and targeted approach to the problem, instead of the administration’s recent Godzilla-style romp through the world of TV advertising.

Drinking doesn’t need commercials to make it look fun. Students form that impression from their daily lives. They go out with their friends on Friday night and rehash their stories Saturday morning — and very few of those stories involve the commissioner of the More Taste League.

Rather than trying to remove alcohol from the social consciousness by declining to renew advertising contracts (or limiting bars and liquor stores as Capitol Neighborhoods, Inc. has tried, or using university funds to fund ID scanners, or trying to establish a banned-from-purchasing-alcohol list), the university and surrounding community must recognize that beer will continue to be a large part of campus life for the foreseeable future.

In the meantime, it would be best to work towards prevention and treatment. $250,000 sure would have funded a lot of AA meetings. Making students in the dorms and across the rest of campus aware of the resources available to them — and funding those resources — is the best way to combat alcohol-related destructive behavior. Groups like PAVE address destructive behavior associated with drinking, rather than drinking itself because they know how difficult it will be to get students to put down the bottle. To adapt an analogy my eighth grade teacher (Mr. Backe) was fond of: since we’re already in the car, it’s easier to convince us to put on a seatbelt than convince us to get out.

Simply depriving me of the chance to see Jim Mora lecture reporters about “playoffs!?” won’t work. It will only make me angry and will probably drive me to drink.

Joe Labuz ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in biomedical engineering