Part 1: RV tailgate city
Another college football season is almost here. Get out the grill, stock up the cooler, and let the party begin!
The Ultimate Tailgate Machine—complete with four flat-screen TVs, 2 full-size kitchens, and an exterior grill—to parking lots around the country finding good food and fun people. Photo courtesy: Gator Tailgating
It is tailgating season and Welcome to Tailgate City, as much a part of college football as the Heisman Trophy and grumbling about the bowl system.
And just in time for the fall football frenzy, Vogel Talks RVing offers up tips for successful RV tailgating.
From Mississippi—where women in formal dresses and men wearing ties congregate at the “Grove”—to Washington—where fans can party on boats docked near the stadium—this has become the country’s giant backyard. Friendships are renewed. Stories are swapped. And gargantuan amounts of food and drink are consumed.
The game, it seems, has almost become a sidelight, nothing more than a reason to get together for some tailgating outside the stadium.
Millions of football-loving Americans are gearing up to support their favorite teams this fall. With the help of well-equipped RV kitchens and a big dash of creativity, it promises to be a great tailgating season.
The annual rite of autumn begins…Oklahoma and Texas, Army and Navy, Vikings and Packers, Florida and Georgia, Alabama and Auburn, Mississippi and Mississippi State, USC and UCLA, Michigan and Penn State, Texas Tech and Texas A&M…
Ask true fans—they can tell you! The best place to be at a football game is not necessarily the 50-yard line.
Tailgating can make an ordinary football game into a special event. It brings together the four F’s—family, friends, fans, and food.
Tailgating is about having fun, eating good food, and armchair quarterbacking.
Whatever your favorite team, it’s time to pack up the RV and head to the stadium parking lot. Photo courtesy: RVBasics
Tailgating is talking discussing how the game will unfold, and after the game, dissecting every play.
Whatever your favorite team, it’s time to pack up the RV and head to the stadium parking lot.
You’ll be joining thousands of fans who enjoy the festive atmosphere while partying with fellow parking lot participants.
Bring your home to the game. Each weekend, stadium parking lots across the country fill with tailgaters, who often produce elaborate food spreads in their RVs before and after the big game.
Tailgating in an RV means bringing your kitchen along, everything from onboard oven/stove and microwave, refrigerator and ice maker, blender and fry pan, to grill and smoker.
Your ingredients will be fresh and accessible.
RVs have plenty of space to store cooking supplies and utensils.
Anything you can prepare at home, you can make in an RV, and serve up fresh.
No lugging tables, chairs, and everything else but the kitchen sink—it’s all on board, including the kitchen sink.
Let the football season begin!
Worth Pondering…
The Red River Shootout—the rivalry between University of Texas and the University of Oklahoma—has been a fixture here, set against the backdrop of the Texas State Fair, since 1929.
—Dave Hollingsworth
Part 2: Origin of tailgating
Rutgers University and its neighbor, Princeton, played the first game of intercollegiate football on Nov. 6, 1869, on a plot of ground where the present-day Rutgers gymnasium now stands in New Brunswick, N.J. Rutgers won that first game, 6-4. The game was played with two teams of 25 men each under rugby-like rules, but like modern football, it was “replete with surprise, strategy, prodigies of determination, and physical prowess,” to use the words of one of the Rutgers players. Photo courtesy: Rutgers
RV tailgating is an American tradition and likely has its roots in college football. RVers have been tailgating since the very first game at College Field in New Brunswick, New Jersey, between Rutgers and Princeton in 1869, when fans traveled to the game by carriage and buckboard—think very early RVs—and grilled sausages and burgers at the “tail end” of the horse. Local authorities insist it was both a fine game and a fine party.
Of course, Yale’s version, as verified by no less authority than Yale University itself, says it all began at Yale in 1904. Private train cars brought fans to a Yale game. The train stopped at the station and the fans then walked to the stadium. Upon arriving at the stadium, they were naturally hungry and thirsty. So the idea was born to bring along a picnic hamper of food for the next game—and tailgating was born.
Twelve years after that first Rutgers-Princeton game, in 1881, the first collegiate football game south of the Mason-Dixon Line occurred on the bluegrass at Old Stoll Field in Lexington, Kentucky. In those days it was customary for the fans of each team to put on a fish and wild game supper before the contest and enjoy the leftovers after the game where they relived the on-field exploits.
The party and its basic elements, though, might have earlier origins. Two historical events occurred a few years before the landmark Rutgers-Princeton game, and together they speak to both the role of managed conflict in bringing people together socially and the American approach to a, vehicle-based cuisine.
At the First Battle of Bull Run in 1861, also known as the First Battle of Manassas—the name used by Confederate forces and still often used in the South—near Manassas, Virginia, enthusiastic Union supporters arrived with baskets of food and shouts of “Go Big Blue!” to watch the opening battle in America’s Civil War. Historians generally agree this was a case of the right idea at the wrong time, war not being a spectator sport.
The Extreme Tailgate Bus has butterly doors that open up to expose the ultimate tailgating kitchen complete with a 36-inch smoker and a 48-inch gas grill. Photos courtesy: motorcycle-usa
On that day precedent was set for future upsets by Southern teams against their Northern opponents. Most important, the incident established regional differences in tailgating traditions.
Secondly, in 1866, Charles Goodnight, a Texas rancher, addressed the cowboys’ need for a rolling chow hall by transforming a U.S. Army Studebaker wagon into the first chuck wagon—think another early RV. The design was simple, compact, and enduring. In fact, Goodnight’s fully equipped mobile kitchen differs very little from those used by the modern tailgaters.
The draws that pull today’s fan to the stadium parking lot are the same ones that drew that crowd in 1869—the friends, the party, and the game. In fact, two out of three are sufficient for many fans. And probably in that order: One survey found 30 percent of tailgaters never set foot in the stadium.
Worth Pondering…
What started out with a few sandwiches and a couple of beers before the game…has evolved the tailgate party into great American sports tradition.
—Chiff.com
To continue reading this 10-part series, click here.
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