Illustration by Cody Angell

There are only five days until the UA football team tears into its season against Northern Arizona University. Expert fans fully expect Mackovic to pull a win out of his pocket as the Tucson heat and the 63rd-ranked Wildcats waste the Big Sky Lumberjacks. And don't worry, team. A bunch of wasted fans will root you guys on.

Do football and alcohol go hand-in-hand? It does not take a Cheesehead or a Cardinals fan (do they exist?) to tap into the Budweiser advertisements scattered in between interceptions.

Drinking is found with the pigskin, and our campus is no exception. But it should be surprising that the UA athletic department is responsible for kicking off the season with the lure to get that pre-game buzz. At the intersection of Alvernon Way and Speedway Boulevard, a catchy billboard reads: "Tailgating is like the ultimate happy hour."

Scott Mackenzie, UA athletics director of marketing, admitted getting two calls from people complaining about the advertisement. My call was the third.

Mackenzie was very kind and clear when he explained to me that the three of us were just misunderstanding the message. "Happy hour," he described, "is getting together with friends and having a good time. There is no implication that alcohol is involved."

True. True. After all, the sign did not say, "Hey, come get wasted with your friends before the football game." But, technically that statement does not say the word "alcohol" either.

Intrigued by his answer, I pondered if I understood the definition of "happy hour." Mackenzie had mentioned that I had seen the billboard as campus-related alcohol advertisement because that was my "frame-of-mind."

It was a good point. I am a student. I sit in the student section. I smell the student section. I see the alcohol snuck into games and the hordes of students who walk from bar to stadium on game days. He was right. I did have a biased frame-of-mind.

In order to clear up the definition of "happy hour," I decided the best way would be to ask those who knew it best: bar managers. So I called Fourth Avenue.

When asked the particular bar's definition of "happy hour," Tom at Bison Witches Bar & Deli noted, "It is from 3 to 7 p.m. It is cheap drinks and a good time." Down the street at Maloney's, Wes answered that it was "a time when people come in to have a few drinks and cheap food after class or work and relax."

For Plush, Erica thought happy hour was associated "with drink specials ÷ a time to gather with friends, have a cold beverage, and listen to music." More dramatically, Jim at Che's Lounge proudly told me, "Happy hour is all the time. It is always happy hour. Always cheap drinks." An employee at Dirtbags described it as a time "when people get off work and have a couple of cheap drinks." Last but not least, was Patty's response. "At The Buffet we have the Îhappy minute.' At 6 p.m. and 11 p.m., customers can get whatever they are drinking for a dollar because it is illegal to give anything away for free."

The UA athletic marketing department can play perception games all it wants. But the reality is that truth is by consensus. Each bar manager's definition had one common vein: Happy hour is a time and place to consume alcohol.

Mackenzie strongly brought to my attention that the advertisement was "not to promote drinking. People can choose whether to drink or not at their tailgating party just like someone can choose not to drink at happy hour."

Why go to happy hour? To be happy?

The billboard is a badly chosen advertisement for not only a campus event, but one that Mackenzie himself describes as "a family environment." Nor is it sensitive to the fact that alcohol abuse is the leading problem on every college campus.

Why can't the advertisement read, "Tailgating is like the ultimate pre-game activity?" Because it is does not catch the targeted beer-guzzling crowd.

It is no secret that alcohol and football go together, especially at an organized UA tailgate pre-game party. Commander Brian Seastone of the University of Arizona Police Department admitted that he couldn't be sure if alcohol-related crimes increase on game days, but he did mention that a lot of drinking does go on. It is absurd that UA feels it must scream such a message across bustling public streets in order to draw a larger crowd. The athletics department should take down the advertisement before schedule.

After all, the Wildcat football fan beer drinkers do not need to be reminded when and where to drink. And to everyone else in the community, the advertisement is inappropriate.