MnIndy file photo

The University of Minnesota is the latest public body to make a mess with multiple beverage-marketing deals. The U of M has canceled a contract with Red Bull because the energy-drink company’s on-campus ads conflicted with the university’s separate, exclusive contract with Coke. Last year it was the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board that couldn’t keep its dealings with the same two drinks straight.

Selling corporations exclusive access to citizen-consumers, while lucrative, creates perennial problems for public institutions.

The U of M had to back out of another deal last year, with Victoria’s Secret, after the lingerie retailer’s taste in Gopher-branded attire didn’t measure up to the university’s “image” and “values.”

Last week, the university’s marching band director denied the band had formed the TCF Bank corporate logo at the university’s new TCF Bank Stadium, so named under a $35 million contract with the bank. Rather, he said, when the student-musicians formed the letters “TCF” on the field during the opening game of the football season, they were spelling out the name of the building.

Once the line is crossed, public bodies cheerfully go above and beyond the obligations they create for themselves to corporate sponsors.

This month, the public Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission’s decision to let the Minnesota Vikings sell naming rights to various parts of the Metrodome bore fruit, as the field and several gates got new corporate names such as “Mall of America Field at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome.”

Public agencies doing double-deals with beverage multinationals and slapping corporate logos on publicly funded educational facilities is another, but the Minneapolis park board took the trend one step further in the summer of 2008, when it sold Red Bull a permit to install huge cubes marketing its product — in the guise of a photography exhibit — on the bike lanes that run down the middle of the historic Stone Arch Bridge. Several bike-pedestrian crashes ensued.

Photo: Chris Steller, MnIndy

Saturday night, sports fans filling the new TCF Bank Stadium at the University of Minnesota can enjoy some good old-fashioned logo-spotting the way it was meant to be — back on campus and under the stars. You can help Goldy Gopher do a spot check to see if the University of Minnesota is fulfilling its contractual obligations to market TCF Bank.

It’s one thing to say the name of a private bank every time you refer to the public university’s new stadium. True enthusiasts will want to go the extra yardage by checking off these randomly selected stipulations from the $35 million contract between TCF and the U of M:

__ [TCF Bank Stadium] and/or Stadium Logo shall be prominently displayed in a fixed manner on the exterior of the Stadium … visible and readable from the two intersections abutting the Stadium site through which it is anticipated that the majority of cars passing the Stadium will move … [T]the University shall not be required to demolish any existing buildings in order to achieve such visibility.

__ The name “University of Minnesota” and the slogan “Home of the Golden Gophers” and such other slogans as the University may adopt from time to time for marketing University of Minnesota football or University of Minnesota athletics in general (“University Slogans”) may be displayed at up to sixty percent (60%) of the size of [TCF Bank Stadium] on fixed signs that number in the aggregate … fewer than or equal to the combined number of prominent exterior signs displaying [TCF Bank Stadium]. If the University’s name or slogan is illuminated in any location, then the exterior sign(s) in the same location that bear [TCF Bank Stadium] shall be illuminated with the same or greater lighting quality and intensity. …

__ [TCF Bank Stadium] shall be prominently displayed on a “welcome” sign in the Stadium ticket lobby.

__ [TCF Bank Stadium] shall be prominently displayed over the largest two scoreboards … [T]he height of the uppercase letters in [TCF Bank Stadium] is at least the same as the height of the clock and score digits of such scoreboards and [TCF Bank Stadium] is sufficiently illuminated as to avoid being obscured by the intensity of light emanating from scoreboard displays.

__ [TCF Bank Stadium] shall appear on all University Home Game tickets … University shall not use Home Game or Event ticket backs to advertise or promote any Financial Services Company or its products or services. …

__ [TCF Bank Stadium] and/or Logo will appear on name badges used by service employees employed by University. …

__ [TCF Bank Stadium] and/or Logo will appear on all vehicles that are exclusively dedicated to maintenance at the Stadium.

__ To the extent that it has control over radio and television broadcasts, the University shall require the [TCF Bank Stadium] be used to identify the Stadium in all of such broadcasts that emanate from the Stadium.

__ TCF shall have one full-page color ad per Home Game in all game day football programs, which may be located on the inside front cover, back cover, or in the center, as TCF may choose.

Just across campus, you can warm up for your evening of logo-spotting with a visit to another new U of M building crowded with corporate logos. Herbert M. Hanson, Jr. Hall, which opened a year ago at the Carlson School of Management on the West Bank campus. Can you find logos for:

Securian?

Wells Fargo and Dairy Queen?

Best Buy?

Toro?

SuperValu and Travellers?

And for champion logo-spotters only, four in one go: Can you find logos for 3M, Target, General Mills and US Bank?

Police charged an Iowa woman and a man she doesn’t know (also inebriated and from Iowa) with indecent conduct. The 38-year-old mother of three told the Des Moines Register she was so drunk on wine she doesn’t remember a thing, but the incident and the attendant press coverage has already cost her her job and “ruined my life.”

If the regents decide to go with alcohol sales, in spite of the Nov. 22 incident and a state drinking age of 21 that excludes many undergrads from imbibing, they’ll find that TCF Bank Stadium is already sumptuously outfitted for public bathroom sex.

TCF Bank Stadium will have 400 bathroom stalls for women, 80 for men (plus 200 individual urinals, not communal troughs as at the Dome). ”[D]on’t expect the traditional lines outside of the women’s restrooms,” trumpeted the university’s new service — although that was before the audience for public sex acts in bathroom stalls was fully understood.

While the stadium itself is still under construction, it’s elaborate Web site is not, and there you can get an idea of the facilities available for splendor near the the gridiron. The Indoor Club ($3,000 per seat) will have its own private restrooms. The “M Room,” a 3,000-square-foot gathering space for varsity letter-winners of all eras and genders, is similarly equipped: Listed amenities include “private restrooms for men and women.” (Separately? Not clear.) The M Room is a gathering space “for anyone who has ever worn the ‘M’,” a promotional Web page says. Will designers now have to hurriedly design an “A Room” for anyone who has ever been forced to wear that letter?

“These are not areas that are multiple-use facilities,” U of M Vice President Kathryn Brown told regents at their Nov. 14 meeting, explaining that alcohol sales will be limited to high-priced premium areas of the new stadium.  A review of the video from that meeting (alcohol discussion starts at 1:56) reveals other statements that now lend themselves to new interpretation (emphasis added).

Chair Patricia Simmons: ”The restriction of the venue is designed to minimize the opportunity for student exposure to unhealthy practices.”

Regent Anthony Baraga: “I don’t see what we gain by selling alcohol or even giving it away at sporting events. My thought would be that we shouldn’t sell it or give it away at sporting events. I’m sure our basketball hockey or our football games would be just as exciting.”

No word on whether the TCF Bank Stadium state-of-the-art “scoreboard” will take up where the Metrodome’s popular Kiss Cam feature left off. If love is a (gateway) drug, then watching random people kiss is just the beginning.

Meanwhile, the lowly Metrodome — whose occupants want to leave so badly, team owners spend millions lobbying the state for public funding of new stadiums — is now home to the state’s second-most famous bathroom stall — and the only one of the two where the public sex it’s famous for actually happened.

So what do taxpayers, who came up with a bigger chunk of funding for the stadium than corporate or other donors, get in return? Lettered slabs of cast stone.

Last week the university unveiled how the stadium will honor the public’s investment of $137.2 million: Set in the stadium’s wall will be a cast-stone sign for each of Minnesota’s 87 counties, bearing the name of the county. If the Minnesota taxpayers’ contribution were divided equally among the counties, that would make each county’s portion $1,577,012. Of course, county tax bases aren’t equal, so their contributions aren’t either, but every county’s sign will be 16 feet long. It was notable that the first five unveiled last week had short names: Pope, Ramsey, Red Lake, Redwood and Renville (visible at this webcam). It’ll be interesting to see how 17-character (including spaces) Lake of the Woods plays out over 16 feet. Legislative districts names (16, 59B, etc.) would have been a more compact and efficient way of mainlining payback to the source of the money, but maybe less classy. Meanwhile, the ‘U’ has embarked on a new campaign visiting every county of the state to raise the last $10 million of stadium funding from individual donors.