Ric Flair ... kickoff at 11 ... perfect
Toby Mergler kicks off a week of favorite tailgating memories on Page 2
I love tailgating. If I had my way, the reception for my wedding would be an epic tailgate, exceeded in scope only by the one preceding my funeral after my fiancée killed me for even suggesting such a ridiculous idea.
|
Does your college or alma mater grill up the finest sausages and steaks in the land? Next week, Page 2 is unveiling a bracket of the best tailgating campuses, but we need your help in the selection process. Click here to tell us why your school should make the bracket. |
During my illustrious tailgating career, I've been lucky to witness many things. I saw a 98-pound blonde girl cause a near riot among male Jets fans after she spent 20 minutes whipping perfect spirals all over the Giants Stadium parking lot. I looked on in horror as a hat was passed at the end of a horse race, collecting money to entice a guy to do a full belly slide through an overflowing urinal trough. And I watched a 90-something grandmother accost a visiting fan in Redskins gear who was in the middle of relieving himself in the woods on the way to the Patriots' stadium, telling him, "You have a lot of nerve wearing that around here." (OK, it was me. I was terrified.)
But my favorite memory comes from the 2003 Continental Tire Bowl, which matched Virginia -- my alma mater -- versus the Larry Fitzgerald-led Pittsburgh Panthers. College football games remain the absolute best events at which to tailgate, and bowl games are the pinnacle. You get to go to a fun city, celebrate the season and hang out with thousands of strangers who share your passion. It's hard to imagine a better opportunity to break out the grill, fill it with meat, crack a few beers, and spend hours telling stories with new and old friends.
Unfortunately, at that 2003 bowl in Charlotte, N.C., I didn't have any of those things except for the friends, so we were forced to improvise. While they are wonderful events, one tough thing about bowl games is that you often are unfamiliar with the lay of the land. We were in a hotel that was slightly farther from the stadium than we originally thought, and since we were 23 years old and hadn't seen each other since college, no one could be talked into driving.
Making things more difficult was an 11 a.m. kickoff that came on the tail of a night spent in downtown Charlotte attending a pep rally and bar hopping. It wasn't just the beverages from the night before that caused our heads to pound; we still couldn't believe that the pep rally was led by pro wrestling legend Ric Flair. Wearing black satin pajamas that looked like Hugh Hefner knockoffs acquired from the irregular bin at TJ Maxx, he rambled on for more than 20 minutes, making virtually no sense whatsoever. I remember three of his points. One was, "WOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!" Another was, "Charlotte really knows how to pour liquor." The third was some crazy story about recently running into Tony Dorsett at an airport. When the Pitt legend asked Flair for an autograph, the "Nature Boy" told him "to come back when you grow up, son." Um, what?
Even if it didn't make sense, Flair's performance still had us fired up, and at 7 a.m., we rubbed the sleep out of our eyes and sprung into action. Like tailgating MacGyvers, we took stock of what we had and how best to use it. At our disposal, we had a case of beer, half a bag of Doritos, several bottles of vodka, mixers and, for some reason, a medium-sized cooler obtained the night before.
At most college campuses, a relative blind eye is turned to what's inside the ubiquitous red cups, but we didn't know whether that would be the case in Charlotte. Facing a 2-mile walk to the stadium and a lengthy tailgate, we decided to take drastic action. Several future lawyers put their heads together and reached a conclusion that was equal parts inspired and stupid: If all the alcohol was poured into the cooler, it couldn't be considered an open container. Emboldened by our terrible logic, we dumped all the vodka we had into the cooler, stirred in the mixers and set off on our journey.
As we moved through the streets taking turns drinking from the spout, we waited for the fateful moment when Johnny Law turned up to put a stop to our shenanigans. About five blocks from the stadium, a police officer directing traffic saw us and took a few steps in our direction. Just when we thought we were going to have to attempt to explain our uninformed legal position to someone who actually knew the law, he stopped, shook his head a few times and chuckled, before walking back the other way. Victory was ours!
Upon reaching the parking lot, we were embraced by all the other UVA fans, who were more than happy to barter burgers and hot dogs for an opportunity to drink from the cooler. Well-fed and well-lubricated, we tailgated the morning away before watching the Hoos knock off the Panthers 23-16. It was a perfect day.
Quick postscript. One of my friends (we'll call him "Tank") might have had a few too many pulls from the cooler. That night, even though he wasn't driving anywhere, Tank couldn't find his keys back at the hotel and set off to look for them. Forty minutes later, my buddy John went downstairs to meet the pizza guy. When he got outside, he found Tank wandering aimlessly on a construction site containing a half-built building. It looked just like the set of the first "Die Hard." We don't know whether he thought he needed to single-handedly fight off a terrorist invasion or was just lost, but John brought him back inside for his own safety. He never did find his keys and became paranoid about the situation, so to our extreme amusement, he called his mom in the middle of the night, asking her for a ride as we laughed hysterically.
As I said, it was a perfect day.
Toby Mergler is a freelance writer based in Washington, D.C., who has previously written for MLB.com, Fanball and the Virginia Law Weekly. He can be reached at tobymergler@gmail.com.
