If the Iowa State football team wins the Homecoming 1998 football game, fans will have to be content to cheer — the goal posts will not be coming down.

Tom Kroeschell, assistant athletic director of media relations, said the athletic department “won’t utilize these goal posts next season,” and will replace the current style of goal posts with posts fans will not be able to tear down.

The athletic department will choose one of three options for next year’s goal posts.

These options include purchasing either immovable steel or collapsible goal posts, or the department could consider retro-fitting the current goal posts to a collapsible style.

The goal posts will be replaced because of safety issues.

“Almost every time goal posts are taken down, somebody gets hurt,” Kroeschell said.

Officials began looking into an alternative style of goal post after this year’s Homecoming game, when the north end zone post was torn down and thrown into Lake LaVerne.

“There was nothing we could do immediately. It takes six to eight weeks [to get new goal posts], and we couldn’t do anything with our own,” Kroeschell said.

The collapsible goal posts the department is considering are becoming popular at many other schools, including the University of Iowa.

These posts are “rigged so that by pulling a pin, the crossbar and uprights come down,” Kroeschell said. “They would be down before [the fans] got there.”

Kroeschell said both the University of Nebraska and Northwestern University use the steel goal posts. Although students there have tried to tear the goal posts down, “they won’t come down,” he said.

Laurie Gustafson, assistant vice president for business operations, said when a goal post was replaced after the Ohio game two years ago, one set of two cost $4,200.

The approximate cost of replacing this style today would be $5,000, Kroeschell said.

Two steel goal posts cost $19,900.

After the October 25 Homecoming game, the athletic department salvaged the downed goal post and reinstalled it in the north end zone. Parts from a spare goal post were also used.

“The base and crossbar are from the goal post thrown in Lake Laverne, and the uprights are from the spare,” Kroeschell said.

“We keep an extra goal post all the time,” said Richard Doyle, systems control technician for the athletic department.