Written by Dave Homsher on Thursday, 18 September 2008 Category:Random Hits:3967

Penn State football is not just a game.  It’s a religion.  Nittany Lion fans follow their team so closely that each big win feels like Neil Armstrong’s 1st step on the moon, and each loss feels like the time Bambi’s mom died.  This past weekend, I was invited to join a group of diehard Lion faithful, enter the sacred tailgate, and pray to the god of football, Joe Paterno.

The Penn State/Syracuse tailgate was so miraculous that it will be passed down as legend throughout the ages like Frodo and the Ring of Gondor. (Yes, being the huge nerd that I am I know that it is really the Ring of Power, but the “Ring of Gondor” was sort of a running joke over the weekend about my wedding ring and its incredible magnetic ability to attract barely legal co-eds)  Opposing colleges shudder at the thought that the same crew might invade their campus and put their own tailgaters to shame.  It was so epic that it turned a group of adult men and women into crazed wildebeasts incapable of actions other than screaming at the top of their lungs:

MMMMMMMMUUUUUUUUUUUAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

Only a sneak peak at the insanity

Using my admittedly hazy memories from our tailgate as the unofficial bible of tailgating, the following steps will teach you how to create your own legend, and enter into the tailgate hall of fame.
 

1. Plan Ahead! – The most important ingredient to successful tailgate is the crowd.  If Sarruda and I met before the game and had a few cold ones, it might be a good time, but bards aren’t going to be singing tales of our glory for countless centuries.  The best events are set MONTHS in advance, so that everyone can adjust their schedules accordingly.  If you called me the night before, I’d still show up, but good luck organizing a crew of 30+ on such short notice.  People are BUSY – they’ve got wives, girlfriends, video games, knitting, backgammon, work, trips to the gym, kite-flying, channel surfing, napping, and a whole other wealth of extremely important activities taking up their time.  You want your tailgate to be like ours, with a mass of people so huge that the very ground shakes with your “WE ARE…PENN STATE” chants.  You’d better make sure that you’ve got the whole crew lined up early.  For this game in late September, our hotels were booked in February.  FEBRUARY!   

2. Location, location, location –GO TO A ROAD GAME!  You might think you can throw a party like this at a home game, but you’re wrong.  Bigtime schools have been there and done that.  They’ve got so many crazed frat parties, and so many students, that for them you’ll just blend right into the background.  Do you want to blend into the background?  HELL NO!!  You want to take over the campus!  The only way to make that happen is to load a ton of people into some SUVs and pick up trucks and haul ass out to a road game.  When you arrive, so many people should roll out that it should look like the clown-car at the circus.  The opponent’s fans should be dumbfounded that you could possibly roll in this deep in their territory.  They should be angry.  They should yell obscenities at you.  Once you’ve got that going, you know you are on the right path. 

Get your tailgate spot the night before.  You don’t want to end up in The Itchy Lot 40 miles away from the game.  You want to be in on the action in a prime time location.  We ventured to the RV lot 2 miles from campus, and our fearless leader instantly proclaimed “Nope, not happening.”  He drove us back to the best spot on the whole campus, a spot you could not imagine in your wildest dreams.  We were along the path to the stadium, so that just about every single person heading to the game had to march directly past us to make their way to the game.  The frat houses and sorority houses were so close that you could almost smell the remnants of last night’s party.  Our leader actually called the lot OWNER at home and forced him to meet us the night before the game at the lot so we could ensure our spot.  We blocked off approximately TEN parking spaces that night so that no one else could sneak in and evict us from our glorious area.     

3. Start Early – If you start the tailgate at 1:30 for a 3:30 kickoff, no matter how terrific your location, and no matter how spectacular your event, none of your guests will have enough time to enjoy it.  For example, we had 7:45 AM start for a 3:30 kickoff.  That’s almost EIGHT HOURS of tailgating.  We had the grill fired up by 8:15, and “The Grillmaster” himself delivering some Ronald McDonald worthy breakfast sandwiches soon thereafter.  The RV was set up by 8:30, and shortly thereafter we were enjoying Kirk “Buckeyes Suck” Herbstreit and Lee “Stupid Ass Animals on His Head” Corso as college football pregame shows were delivered in glorious HD on the satellite television.  Even though it means waking up at the buttcrack of dawn, without an early start your tailgate will fail like Vince Young on the Wonderlic Test.

4. The 800 – You heard me correctly the first time.  EIGHT. HUNDRED. BEERS.  King Leonidas and the Brave 800 marched to the hot gates of Syracuse and fought for the freedom of all tailgaters to act like buffoons and jackasses.  To put it simply, a sober tailgate is not something people marvel at for its greatness.  There should be enough beers that every one of the patrons can get thoroughly SLOSHED if its their thing, and still have enough left over so that stragglers can be invited in to mooch a cold one.  Who remembers a cheap, stingy tailgate?  NO ONE!  The beer should be flowing not like a faucet, but like a fire hose.  

A rough estimate of our beer flow

Nothing like a game of flip cup to put a swift end to sobriety

 
 

The Grillmaster!

Also, NO WEAKSAUCE ALLOWED!  Get rid of your traditional burgers and hotdogs.  Cook steaks, chicken wings, pork tenderloins, and other deliciousness.  Then, cut each perfectly seasoned, immaculately cooked meat into small strips so that everyone can bask in the glow of otherworldly tastes.  Besides, you are going to need a full stomach if you are to withstand the CARNAGE brought on by Step #6.

6. Chug lines on the hour, every hour – WHOA NELIE!!  Now, THIS is how you do it up right!  The notorious PSU chug line works like this:  First everyone lines up in a straight line.  Second, precisely as the clock strikes the hour mark, the first person in line chugs their full beer as fast as Joey Chestnut downs hot dogs (MANDATORY that it is totally full to start).  Third, he SLAMS his beer into the ground like spiking the ball after the game winning touchdown.  Finally, he runs down the line yelling and screaming, while high-fiving the rest of the chuggers.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  These chug lines have to be organized like a finely tuned engine to be successful.  You need a point man to round up the troops ahead of time, and also to recruit fearless potentials from nearby tailgates.  Our first line had around 25 brave souls, and the energy they brought to the chants and yells was so contagious that by the second line we were 45 or 50 people deep and the line took ALMOST TEN MINUTES to get from end to end.  The Blue Band (actual PSU band members) joined in on the fun and ended up playing the fight song, the alma mater, and other PSU chants at each and every line. 

Good luck getting the school band to play for you

The early lines were absolutely WILD with energy.  People were funneling and shotgunning beers with regularity.  One guy had his drink poured down his throat via a MEGAPHONE!!  The high five part of the line was equally crazy.  We saw people chest bumping and even one SU student pushed down the line IN A SHOPPING CART!!  We even had a SEVENTY year old lady in the line at one point!  The lines were so DEVASTATING, that by the time the 2 PM or 3 PM line rolled around, we could barely stand.  Our crew was so thoroughly HAMMERED that we were excited just to make it to the end of the line, let alone any shopping cart tomfoolery.

Shotgun #1 - 9 AM

DEFINITIVE PROOF that former manranter Mark Wells is still alive

 

SHENANIGANS!

 

Homsher in the 2 PM chug line, barely standing

7. MC Hammer – The music has got to be jumpin’ with some crazy fresh beats.  We dropped a MASSIVE speaker in the middle of our 10 parking spaces and blasted out decibel levels rarely seen outside of the front row of Jay-Z concerts.  Our MC was this out of his mind batsh** crazy sober guy who was probably the most energetic person in the entire crew.  He was constantly rallying the troops and starting Penn State chants to pump us up and demoralize the Syracuse fans.  The best part about the MC was that even though he doesn’t drink, that CERTAINLY did not stop him encouraging the entire crowd to party like there was no tomorrow.  He wielded such immense power that you might have thought he was Superman himself.  After about 2 hours, we would do WHATEVER he said.  LITERALLY.  If he started a chant, the whole crowd joined in.  If he said, “Get in line”, the whole world dropped what they were doing and started the chug line.  He honestly could have asked us to strip naked and sprint across campus and I GUARANTEE that there would have been a wealth of arrests made in the Syracuse area that day.  He was the Pied Piper, and we were his obedient children.   For your tailgate, a loco sober guy is actually preferred because if you think you are going to remember to organize the chug lines after this level of alcohol consumption, you will be sorely mistaken.

Not the MC, but this hobo did rock the MIC for a while

8. Take over the other team’s stadium – Just dominate.  Period.

55-13. Enough said.

That’s it – a simple 8 step guide (Does it seem like all guides are 8 steps, or is it just me?) to throwing your own RIDICULOUS tailgate.  As for our own adventure, the only way it can be topped at the next event is to invite the actual Nitanny Lion mascot, and for Joe Paterno himself to give the pre-tailgate pep talk.    

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