Hours before kickoff of Saturday’s Iowa State-Iowa game, ISU Police and fans arrived at the tailgating area southeast of Jack Trice Stadium, and though the heat was high, tempers were chilled.

Saturday’s game drew a crowd of 54,290, the largest since the stadium was reconfigured in 1996.

Fans arrived earlier than expected, and, as a result, S. 16th Street had to be closed off for a while and the stadium parking lot opened early to compensate as a public safety concern to accommodate the crowd, said ISU Police Capt. Gene Deisinger.

“The crowd that starts early tends to be older and the younger crowd comes around later,” he said. “We walk through early to give fans a fair warning and make our presence known.”

ISU police officer Nick Grossman said the student tailgate section was getting full at 5 a.m. as many of the fans showed up the night before.

“We can tell when the mood starts to shift,” he said. “As long as they’re able to police themselves, we tend to leave them alone. Younger adults don’t know their tolerance and that’s when we begin to see problems.”

ISU Police was assisted by five officers from the University of Iowa as well, a match-up that began about four years ago, Deisinger said.

As they made their way through the growing crowds, Deisinger and Grossman were greeted by fans.

An ISU fan invited officers to a game of beer pong, but offered to play with pop instead of alcohol.

“You think we’d purposely get you in trouble?” he said to the passing officers.

“They don’t happen to have showers around here, do they?” an Iowa fan asked.

Farther into the student tailgating sections, Deisinger approached a fan urinating in the wood line.

“Aside from public urination, people sometimes go back there to pass out and we don’t find them for a while,” Grossman said.

By 9 a.m., police had made their first arrest. An Iowa City resident was brought into the Department of Public Safety’s command post dirtied and drunk. He was arrested for public intoxication after blowing .282 into a field sobriety test.

“If they blow over a .25, then before [the Story County Justice Center] will take them, they have to get checked out to make sure they don’t need medical attention,” Grossman said.

In order to reinforce positive behavior and deter underage drinking, ISU Police sponsored two ads in the Daily last week to make students aware of the increase in the underage possession fines.

Thursday’s ad, which read, “It just got harder to love,” was a teaser for Friday’s ad, a poem that cited specific fines for violations like public intoxication, public urination and underage possession of alcohol.

The ads are part of DPS’s agenda to educate, reinforce and reward fans who are doing the right thing, Deisinger said.

One fan commented to officers that he had seen the poem and thought it was a great idea.

Officers also reinforced good behavior Saturday by reintroducing the ISU Police wristbands.

“It amazed me last year that these were such a hot commodity,” Deisinger said.

Students hounded officers as they walked by, but only students with tickets to the game received a wristband. Those fans who were drinking but did not have a ticket could show their ID to get a Cyclone tattoo.

“We want fans inside the stadium to support the game, because we have problems with students only coming to tailgate,” Deisinger said.