Tailgating: it’s as American as apple pie. On college campuses across the country each autumn, students and alumni partake in this event before their school’s football games. It doesn’t matter whether your school is a national powerhouse; fan bases gather in parking lots, empty fields, and, really, any open space to party. It is such a unifying force that fans really think that if they run a great tailgate their team will perform better. You won’t see anything quite like this associated with any other sport or in any other country. Where else would you see police and campus officials organizing an event centered on drinking beer and eating unhealthy food for thousands of people?
The central part of any tailgate is the food. People will arrive sometimes eight or nine hours before a game to start cooking. The aroma from hundreds of barbeques is as intoxicating as the drink being served. Tailgaters are obsessed with meat. Anything that comes from a pig is fair game: hot dogs, bratwursts, sausages, and kielbasa are mainstays on the grill. For the health conscious tailgater, hamburgers, steak, and chicken are usually available. Then it is time to consider the sides: potato salad, chips, dips, and the occasional fruit or vegetable. Concessions in the stadium certainly take a hit from all the eating that occurs in the parking lot before the big game.
No tailgate would be complete without beer. Stroll through a parking lot before a game and you will see cooler after cooler filled with ice cold beer. It doesn’t matter if it’s 20 degrees outside; people will be drinking and they will be drinking in mass quantities. Police will roam through the area to make sure that there isn’t any outright binging going on, but you can be sure nobody is being shortchanged. Fans will come up with specialty drinks based on the weather. Cold, summery drinks for the games on the early part of the schedule and warm, coffee-based drinks for the winter games. The atmosphere is festive, to say the least.
Students use the tailgate sessions as a way to ratchet up school spirit. They will come decked out in the school colors with faces painted. They are "pre-gaming" the actual football contest to be played later in the day. It is a great way for current students to meet alumni and other students they’ve never come across before. The tailgating often carries on well into the night after the game has been played. It is an exhausting day and it makes for a brutal Sunday, but it’s all worth it.
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