Tailgating and pre-gaming for football

Tailgating for college football games is an old college tradition, and it’s not just football games that warrant a good tailgate. At CU, however, the traditional parking lot tailgating consists mostly of alumni and families.

A good portion of the students at CU do their pre-gaming on University Hill, including 21-year-old junior business and Spanish major, Torin Cassani.

“I’m planning on probably heading to the Hill, setting up in a friend’s house, getting all dressed
up for the game and showing up to the game early and sitting in the students section,” Cassani said.

One house on 11th and College streets started the festivities early before Saturday’s game against Hawaii. Beer and Bloody Marys were being sipped right next to a competitive match of beerpong. In another part of the house, there were shots of vodka being taken. Outside was a large group of students and alumni gathered around a circular table with cups filled up a fifth of the way with beer, playing a game called “honeycomb.”

This particular group, apparently influenced by the cold drizzle outside, decided that another keg was a better idea than going to the football game. But there are other students who go about attending football games very differently.

Michael McCreight, a 20-year-old junior Russian studies major, said he doesn’t drink at all and doesn’t go to the football games anymore. He said he did have a routine when he used to attend, however.

“I would just get on my shirt and stuff like that and walk up and check out some of the tailgating stuff, especially the group stuff like The Herd,” McCreight said.

One example of what McCreight refers to as “tailgating stuff” is the Safeway Tailgating Experience, a carnival-like scene that was set up on the field on the other side of the physics building from the stadium. It included DJs, 3-D televisions, a media room to stay up to date on all the football around the nation, games with prizes and free samples of Safeway Select Sandwiches.

Like most things, tailgating is something that one can only perfect in time. Cassani had a piece of advice for those with less tailgating experience than himself.

Whitney Maifarth, a 20-year-old junior civil engineering major, said she was not fortunate enough to take heed of this warning.

Maifarth said last year at the CU vs. CSU game, she started by pre-gaming in her backyard. Walking to the stadium she somehow got separated from her group. When she approached the bottle neck of the student entrance, she said the whole crowd fell over.

“Cops say that if you fall over, you’re too drunk,” Maifarth said. “I was not too drunk.”

They led the entire group of people into the physics building and handed out charges accordingly.

“I got an M.I.P. and since I was underage they took me to detox,” Maifarth said.

Zach Geller, a graduate of the class of 2010, now goes to school at Virginia Tech, and said the tailgating scene is very different than that at CU.

“As a whole, everyone seems to be much more unified around the Tech team than at CU, where pre-gaming activities were chugging beers in your house and then going to the game to yell at coach Dan Hawkins,” Geller said.

CU-Boulder ranked 16th on Princeton Review’s list of top party schools. Virginia Tech, even with its team unity, didn’t make the top 20.

Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Seth Gitner at Seth.gitner@colorado.edu.