Great Moments In Tailgating History vol:1

As college football approaches, it’s time we take a moment, and pay a little attention to the aspect of the game that really matters. Not coaching, play calling, conditioning, or even the players. Not the history, the camaraderie, or the stupid sportsmanship. What really matters, is we get a perfectly good reason to drink large quantities of beer, each and every week. Even better than just sitting around drinking, is drinking in the company of several thousand of your closest friends. The best place for this, is in a parking lot outside the stadium, or behind a bar. This is where the real action is. You get fans, parents, former players, undercover cops, and crazy religious people trying to convince fat dudes in jersey’s to not get abortions. Whether it be at a bar, a corporate sponsored tailgate function, or just a few friends dinking beers out of the back of a rental car. Tailgating is the true American pastime. For those lucky enough to have access to an RV, or live close enough to a major football university, and can do it every week, life gets no better. I’ve decided to compile a list of the greatest tailgating moments of all time. Feel free to add, just don’t add any gay or boring stories.

11/18/2006 #1 OSU vs. #2 Michigan. the greatest rivalry in all of sport. After hosting a house full of beer drinking overnight guests, the day began a shade before 7:00 a.m. so we could all get a roaring start. I began the day with the breakfast of champions. Pancakes, Bacon, eggs, and Guinness. Perfection. This was the first times these schools went into the game ranked #’s 1 & 2. It was senior day for the future heisman trophy winner troy smith, and his buckeye teamates. Michigan looked to steal the emotional edge with the death of their legendary coach Bo Schembechler. My wife had thwarted my attempt at leveling the emotional playing field by assasinating John Cooper. This was the biggest game Columbus OH had ever seen. Traffic was a bastard, and we had to park a few miles away, and shuttle to our final tailgating destination. Parking spots were rarer than a black republican. We thought we found a spot, only to find some dick in a green dodge truck had taken two spots. He would later pay for this mistake, there was no time for revenge now. I had taken coolers of beer, and chairs to my friends R.V. the night before. Preparation is key. We got to our site, and met up with friends areound 10, five hours before kickoff. The Bud lights were flowing. We grilled, we played cornhole, and we drank like champions. The weather was perfect. Sunny, and cool enough to keep the ice from melting. Nary a michigan fan was in site, except for a few retards directly beside us. They had to be dealt with early, so I stumbled over to lay down the rules. It turned out, they were Air force pilots who rented an RV and drove all night to get here, most were nuetral, one was a michigan fan, one was a buckeye fan. Since they were single fighter pilots, they not only attracted chicks, they also had some cool toys. After finding out none of them had ever really blown anything up, I lost interest, until I mentioned I had to pee. They had brought a surplus of the little bags they pee in during long flights, to avoid having to pull over on the way to the game. After trading them someone else’s miller lights, I now had a half dozen government issued piss bags. Things were shaping up nicely. I decided to skip lunch, I was much too nervous, and the only thing that helped was beer. Planning on a few walk-up moochers, we had arranged for an 18 beers per person ratio. As we watched the noon games on t.v. and played cornhole, everyone quickly went into combat drinking mode. A good friend had raised the challenge to see to it all the beer was drank before the day was through. I was in a pickle there. On one side, I didn’t want to deal with leftover beers, on the other, I was in the midst of a pretty good ‘not getting arrested’ streak at OSU michigan games, and my wife was expecting me to build on that streak. I pressed on. As kickoff approached, I had long since broken my seal. The 4 beers per hour, for 5 hours, mixed with the plummeting fall temperature was really doing a number on my bladder, and the limited capacity of the chemical toilet in the RV. It was time to turn to Uncle Sam, and his crazy looking plastic piss bags, full of a strange white powder. The good news is, with an Air Force piss bag, you can go without getting out of your lawn chair. The bad news is, without any practice, there will be spills. I emptied my bladder, and checked the bag. Neary full, and no leaks. The government had done something right! After showing off my new urine filled toy to everyone in sight, I noticed it was beginnning to change color, and consistency. Fearing this was some suoer secret gevernment bomb, I had to pitch it in the people next to us’ fire pit. They did not notice, as it simmered and made weird noises. No explosion, all was well. As kickoff neared, a good friend of mine who was about to embark on a trip into the peace corps, came up with the idea to celebrate a good OSU drive by chugging our beer (since it was a lucky beer), and punishing the unlucky beers after good michigan drives (by chugging our beers). The game became a shootout, and we were chugging a new beer about every 12 minutes. This is usually fun, when you’ve already drank about 18 beers, it’s super fun. The breakneck pace in which we were drinking was for the record books, but it killed our supply. A team had formed to run to a nearby grocerie store to get more beer. The plan was to run there, and pay some stranger money to drive us close to the camper, all during halftime. Since I’m pretty good at carrying stuff, and at buying beer, I was chosen. I had not ran enough to elevate my heart rate in about 2 years, and it was roughly a half mile away to Kroger, things did not look good. I grabbed two beers, and we headed out. Everyone else on the team ran daily. I was fucked. I kept pace the whole way there, only puking the one time (right in front of an applebees) We loaded up on enough beer for a canadian wedding reception, and hopped in a cab, and were back in record time, moments before the 2nd half. The rest of the game was a blur. OSU did everything in their power to make it a close game. Everyone had these weird cut-outs of Kirk herbstreit’s face from ESPN’s college game day. Between the drama on the field, the bonfires in trash cans in which I am naturally drawn to, the 30 beers I had drank, and the thousand herbsreit army, I began to freak out. Luckily OSU got over their turnover/penaltie-itis and pulled out the win. We were headed to the championship game. My best friend lives in the same city as the BCS title game, my wife was going to already be there that week for a conference, destiny was on our side. (history would later show that god would fuck us in the ass on that one). After celebrating for a few hours to avoid traffic, and so our drivers could sober up, it was time to head home and wallow in the sweet smell of victory, and urine soaked denim. I had stopped drinking, and pissed twice in the nearly full chemical toilet of my friends RV. Since I had drank my body weight in cheap american beer, I had to use one more Air Force piss bag. This time I would hang on to it, just to see what happens. It resembles a supersize Breast Milk storage bag, but much larger, full of a weird powder, and ergonomically shaped for a dudes weiner. As we lingered around a fire-pit to warm up, I noticed the full, warm urine bag had started to solidify from the strange powder, and was starting to resemble the consistency of grits. I began drunkenly chatting up strangers. I convinced them I was a food science developer for Cracker Barrel restaurants, and that I was testing out sample bags of our new recipes of grits. Two drunken college girls were hungry and willing to try my “new recipe”. Lucky for them, my better half stepped in and told them it was bags-o-pee. Despite not being able to feed my chemically enhanced urine to strangers, I held on to the bag. Partly for it’s warmth, partly because I knew it would come in handy. We resumed our walk to the car. As we reached the parking lot, only a few cars remained. Low and behold, one of the stragglers, was the same green dodge truck who took two parking places, in an overfilled parking lot. It was time to get some use out of my tax dollars. I cracked open the Air Force urine bag, that now resembled Anthrax spores, and began dumping it out on his doors. The piss had turned into powder, and was blowing away. Most of it was still sticking to his door handles, but I noticed the window was cracked. I dumped the remnants of the bag into his truck, and it looked like someone exploded a bag of flower in his cab. Thousands of little airborne urine flakes were floating all over the inside of this guys truck. Victory was mine. Not only did we win the biggest game, against our biggest rival. We all got trashed, made it home safe, and I exacted the greatest sophomoric revenge of all time. Can life get any better than that? Plus, I still have a few urine bags left.