Welcome back to Crimson cast Galen klaviyo here, along with
Scott Caulfield the like to start this podcast up by wishing
my mom. A happy birthday.
Yeah. Mom Mom, I guess I shouldn't say
how old mom's going to be this year but happy Birthday to mom
I6. Just yeah here is goes out every
year. That's my wife's.
For that's that's right. And it's if you know mom's
birthday was means. My birthday is literally right
around the corner because we're five days apart.
So festive season here in clavius oval but Scott good to
see you again. You've been a busy guy here on
the podcast front lately, just a lot of different podcast.
I've heard many of them, not all of them yet but yeah.
Wait a way to keep the airwaves flowing.
Thank you, try it. First of when is I'm having your
birthday on my calendar? That's Friday.
That's on purpose. Is it Friday?
It's Friday. Yeah.
So, okay. I gotta I gotta add you to my
birthday list. Thanks lad that to my, you get a
special pod for that know. It's been fun doing.
I've had some fun reaching out to people, I enjoyed, we had
Josh Perry from the Big Ten Network.
We haven't listened to that. Check it out.
That's a good one, we have. Yeah, thank you.
We have Adam Rittenberg from ESPN dropping on Monday starting
Crimson cash again. Talk to Connor.
I enjoyed talking to Connor from home.
Feel about like what it was like from a business aspect of n IL,
they have a great T1 Mullen shirt.
Kind of, you know what, it's like from a business point of
view, getting the ilc has been, it's been a fun discussion and
it's been fun. Getting excited for IU football.
I mean, this is the time, like, it's we have a great, we have a
great team, should have a good season coming up.
So, it's fun. I mean, there's a lot to talk
about it. We haven't really even gotten
into the meat of things yet, which is what I think is
exciting like now, here we are less than two weeks out from the
start of the Season, we can start talking about specifics
with the team. Team.
We've gotten a lot of reports from training camp or you know
summer practice fall practice if you want to call it.
Things are starting to take shape a little bit.
We're getting some notes out of practice.
We're seeing what other teams are doing.
This is fun. Like right now it may be as fun
as it gets. You never know.
Like the we the regular season may not be as fun as we think
it's going to be but right now, none of that matters.
And so I'm excited about being able to talk about these things
and we're going to be doing it in.
Several different forms and I guess we can go in announce now
and we'll put it up on social media later.
But for those of you who are in the Bloomington area or even if
you're not and you just want to road trip, come on down the plan
right now is live. Crimson cast at switchyard
Brewing Company on North Walnut Street on Monday August 30th
from 6 to 7 p.m. little early. But you know good time to go
out. Get maybe grab a drink, grab
some pizza, grab some bread. Sticks, whatever.
Listen to some talk about IU football, we're going to try to
have some guests. But even if we don't, we like to
have you folks joining us and get a chance to answer
questions, live and just share in the excitement of the
upcoming season. So again, Monday August 30th.
So depending on when you listen to this either seven or eight
days from today at switchyard Brewing Company in Bloomington
from 6 to 7 p.m. come, check out the live Crimson cast.
We're going to try to do more of these this year, not just in
Bloomington, but also around the Serie and Scott making a rare
appearance down in Bloomington for this.
So it's really a celebration all the way around and Bluetooth a
lot. But yes, it's for a live one and
I think that's I think we should say now that that'll be the
event were you and I do our season preview.
So if you want to hear all of the the bad takes that we make
alive, you could do that. But know to your point we have
another live event scheduled. So we're just, we're slamming it
out there up here in Indianapolis for those of you in
the 317. Shout-out October 30th.
I you've Versus Maryland, a new game.
We're going to be meeting at Grand Junction, so I'll be up
here in Westfield Grand Junction.
It's a great little Brew Pub. They have kids dogs, everyone's
invited. But it's going to be 11:30 start
for a noon game against Maryland and it's a little bit far off,
but a lot of the road games are either night games or their
Michigan. And I want to have a fun
experience. Hopefully the Maryland one is
good. So yeah, October 30th.
Mark, your calendars Grand Junction up here in Westfield.
So yeah, we're, you know, we figure IU football kind of
stepped it up. We just Up last year as a
separate of this year as well too.
Yeah, you know. Absolutely.
It's this could be one of those rare Seasons that you just don't
see very much. Although, it's funny because
we've kind of had two of those in a row, I know with IU.
And so, does it equate to a third?
Now, we're going to get into that.
Over the course of the next two weeks.
We'll talk about our fears or our aspirations for the team,
whatever. But that's not what this episode
today is about, instead. What we're going to be talking
about today is tailgating, you know, I've gotten a lot of
requests, a lot of notes from people People saying hey I need
some tailgating help I'm excited to tailgate for IU football many
of you for the first time you say and you don't know where to
begin. You're not sure what the process
looks like, or you've been doing it and you'd like to do it
better you know I hear that from a lot of people as well and
that's what we're going to talk about on this show is talk about
tailgating talk about some of the options, talk about the
setup. You know, we had a question that
came in from Maroon Hoosier. It was less of a question.
You know, more of a statement but the statement was seems like
there's a need for IU tailgating 101 where to park, what the
Traditions are what music best, local food, and drink Etc.
Bring the bandwagon into the family long term by slowing
them, showing them how to do it, right?
So I think for the bandwagon and actually for people who have
been around for a while, I would actually argue Scott.
That some people in the eye. You fanbase have invested
themselves in the tailgating. You know, firmament others.
Have not And I'd say, even for the non bandwagon, folks, the
folks that have been IU fans. But you know, a lot of times
people have tried to make IU football kind of like momentary
viewing as opposed to being the full day.
You get a lot of folks who like they come in 20 minutes before
the game starts. They take their seats, they make
sure to leave before traffic gets bad because you know you're
from Indiana and that's what you do and that's it.
Well well I'm here to talk about is expanding that experience.
Little bit and making it more of a full day.
And this is a difficult thing, I think and kind of going back to
what maroon Hoosiers said, for a lot of people.
I think the idea that you would take the whole day in
Bloomington at a football tailgate and a football game and
just kind of expand into the broad expanses of what you can
do, that's still a mental hurdle that a lot of people have to
cross. And so hopefully, we can help
you across that bridge as much as we can.
Now Scott, you're in a different spot.
Than me. And I think we need to preface
this whole discussion by saying, you know, Scott lives in the
same situation that many of you who listen to the podcast live
in, he lives about an hour and 20 away without traffic.
And he's got two young kids and a wife.
And it's not just as simple as it is for me because I live 10
minutes from the stadium. Like I can roll out of bed and
be at Memorial Stadium like 15 minutes afterwards.
So we're going to try to filter this through both of Those
prisons people that live close and people that live far away
and try to give you something that can be worthwhile As you
move through tailgating for this year.
So, first off, I guess maybe let's start with the where to
park question and this I think actually go back in time be a
fan, five years ago, buy season tickets in a parking pass in
2014 when no one cared. Well, and you'll be in a great
spot. Well, okay, so there's two
elements here that you have to keep in mind.
If your planned, this is where to some degree, the tailgate.
Ation has to start. Are you going to host?
Are you going to help somebody else in a significant way?
Or are you going to just show up because those are or significant
way it's a great qualifier? Well because you know I think we
have a couple questions that popped up a little later on some
people think that, you know okay if I'm just going to show up to
a tailgate because it's a party and that's perfectly fine, but
then if you are making a substantial contribution, if
you're bringing A lot of food or if you're bringing a canopy or
if you're bringing a grill, you really don't want to haul that
stuff from somewhere else into the tailgating area.
Like, that is a real pain. So this is where you don't have
to go back in time, 5 years. But you do have to go back in
time, like five months and buy tickets or passes Me by parking
passes with your tickets in the area where you know the tailgate
is going to be taking place. And so that's really where we're
going to start with things on the one exception is if you're
going to do this, Grass lot. But even that even though it's a
day of game thing, it's not always a foregone conclusion
that you're going to show up and get parking in the grass lat.
So, here's what I'll tell you, first of all, if you are a
donor, you've already got some pretty good parking passes.
You're probably in the orange lot.
And that's really where everybody wants to be the orange
lot. For those of you that don't
know, is the lot between Memorial Stadium and Assembly
Hall. It's that that the one that runs
the expanse there. I've only gotten to park.
A couple of times and that's just because other people have
given me their parking passes. But I think finding other spots
to park has been an interesting experience, over the course of
time for me. I've actually had parking and I
think four different Lots. Now my favorite by far is the
one that we've landed in long-term and that is the green
lot that is locked 12. That is where our tailgate is
located in the green. Lot is north of Assembly Hall,
South of the tennis center and east of the orange lat.
So it's basically, um, Enter off of fee Lane and I love it
because, you know, you're not like if you park in the purple
lot which is the one off of the bypass over by the baseball
stadium. It's actually it's nicer.
It's a bit bigger, but you also feel like you're in another zip
code from the stadium, whereas parking in the green lot.
You can see the stadium. You can see assembly whole,
there's plentiful. Pretty much everything that you
need over there, and it's also an easy and an easy out.
Whereas purple lot tends to be a little bit of a nightmare.
Sometimes trying to get out. Going either direction, it can
be problematic, there are some other options, there's the blue
lot which has been significantly cut down from what it used to
be. That's the lot that's on the
south side of Assembly, Hall between assembly, whole and
Briscoe. And then, of course, you've got
the grass, Lots themselves, the grass.
Lots. That's where most students are
tailgating. And certainly, it's where a lot
of young alums will tailgate. I've never particularly liked
the grass. Lots Scott primarily because
much like the purple A lot but I think even more.
So it kind of feels like you're not at a football tailgate, it
just kind of feels like you're at a big like outdoor party on
somebody's lawn and it can get muddy, it can get messy, I
think, in a lot of ways. And, and they're gradually
cutting down on those spots like the corporate tensive, taking up
a lot of space. You've seen some of those things
kind of Disappearing. There's like a nature, like
regrowth thing happening in one spot right now.
So that's my suggestion is An almost always by Football
parking passes for tailgating purposes up until they sell out.
And that yes, we're talking about like March April, May buy
them with your tickets, by you can buy additional ones like you
don't have to necessarily, you know, do it all at once.
But the problem is, if you wait, you used to be able to buy
passes during the week. Now, you really can't like it
looks for what I'm looking at right now on.
I you cite all of those. Paved lots are probably sold out
at this stage. So at this point, this is a good
thing. It means more popularity.
It means more people are going, but you do have to buy a little
bit earlier. Yeah, I think you did a great
job of laying that out, you know, where we normally park.
We've moved around a little bit but we are a donor.
You know, we park, right? North of the white lot.
We are there's a little spot between the white lot and the
purple lot where it's like all of the TV trucks kind of are
parked right there and we are literally right behind that.
So like the very south end of lot 9, I like parking over there
because again, we're an hour and we're in, Westfield, I have two
young boys, 8 and 5. And so for me, one of the key
things is getting out and I found that that's a great spot.
I can just hop onto done normally get to the bypass and
get out pretty easily or cut over 19 Street to get to Walnut.
Like it's easier out there. I but I will say, you know, we
are I'm going to do this conversation, we are the ones
who like to bring help kind of not of the significant level,
but we like to bring some stuff and I'll throw some ideas out
there. But you know, I love parking in
that area because we will walk kind of around the north side of
Memorial Stadium over to where your tailgates at and there's
some fun stuff happening around there.
You can see the football practice field, you know, white
lot is all donors but there are some very cool tailgates there.
If you're following us on Instagram I did I'm doing this
in my house or there's a guy in the white lat who has been for
years, flying the IU flag and then whoever Purdue is flying
their flag. Whoever they're playing flying
there. I'm do that in my house this
season. It's fun, it was like 80 bucks
on eBay, buying a bunch of use flags.
There's an old IU bus that's part of a tailgate in the white
lot. There's a like, a wagon train
and it's like, there's some cool stuff there, but I like walking
to yours. I go through the orange, lot of
my friends, Carol and Jeff have a tailgate in the blue lock that
we normally go to and you're right the purple W.
Very cool. A lot of semis and you know
tractor or Trio, big RVs out there, but it does feel a little
bit out there. Definitely blue green, and
orange. You feel Like, you're in kind of
the energy of the stadium. There's also some really cool
tailgates, right around the edge of moral Stadium of those grass.
The grass area up to the stage. You're not going to be able to
get those without a significant amount of money, but there's
some cool old-school tailgates going on there too.
Now if you don't want to pay for parking, I mean there are some
spots where you can get parking and it's not that expensive.
So there's the church, Lots across the bypass and then also
across done Street. There's that church.
Over there where they pay to take like, church trips to
Central America, or something like that with the money that
they make. So there's those spots you start
to pay but those are relatively close.
Now, outside of that, what I would recommend if you don't
mind doing some walking and you don't have a whole bunch of
stuff to carry, keep in mind that, and you want to read the
street signs to be sure. But if you get down into the
like, The Cottage Grove area, 12th Street 11th, Street, 10th
Street, maybe not 10th Street. But 11th Street, that area just
north of Campus. A lot of times on the weekends,
you can park there. Are without having to pay
anything because those are tagged as local neighborhood
parking. But only 8 to 5 Monday through
Friday. Make sure to read you.
Don't want to put yourself in a position where you get ticketed
and towed, but that is relatively close enough that you
could park there walk, and it wouldn't be that big of a deal.
Unless you were trying to go from there all the way to the
purple lat. I would recommend.
Sorry, I would highly, you know, courage against going west of
the stadium kind of anything west of Done because it's
residential but they start shutting down a lot of streets
there. Yes, parking is already normally
full. So you could see that on a map
if you're coming from out of town like oh there's a bunch of
residential stuff, west of the stadium, they start closing
streets at weird times and weird hours.
I used to drive in that way. I don't anymore just because
it's kind of Hit or Miss what's going to be open or not.
So I would just like north of 17th west of done.
I would just less you really know what you're doing.
If you're out of town, I would stay away from that because
you're probably have a tough time getting out to.
We had a question in from, let me find it here real quick,
someone asked, what was the best time to leave?
Indy to come to a tailgate? Like when to get there and I
wanted, this is a very early site at sort of question and I
wanted to make sure that we answered it because I do get
this question a lot. Like one should people show up.
I really, I'm a big fan of getting here at least three
hours before kickoff because you're going to beat almost all
of the traffic by doing it that way.
And I think that's going to be Big deal this year with 37 and I
wouldn't even take 37, frankly, unless you absolutely have to
like, come down 65. If you're coming from India and
go across on 46, it's going to be probably overall and easier
and although if you leave and get to Bloomington three hours
before the game, it's probably not going to hurt that much now.
Almost always tailgate lot times are going to be open for hours
before kick, that was generous. And now there's some sometimes
that's not 100%. Sent the case.
We're going to try to let you all know.
And I think I use doing a better job.
Now, of letting people know when the tailgate lots are open, but
most of the time for a noon kick, the lots are going to open
at 8:00 a.m. so that is not a bad time to show up, sometimes
they'll be additional parking in a lot that you can take
advantage of. Certainly the grass.
Lots will still have openings at that point and even if you're
early, there are places to go eat in Bloomington around that
time. If you don't want to bring your
own, Food, like there's restaurants in town that you can
go to. There's normally some things you
can take advantage of and no, I'm not talking about kok
although you could certainly do that if you wanted to but you
can go other places as well. And so I would recommend getting
down at least three hours before kick because that way you don't
have to worry about getting where you need to get to and we
know traffic flow can be a real problem anyway, but especially
this year with all the construction in Martinsville,
it's going to be a real problem if you're coming from elsewhere.
Elsewhere similar sort of deal. I would get here a bit early and
you know if you can get here by 8:30 or 9:00 get parked and then
go do stuff. That's a pretty good setup.
As far as I'm concerned, you can be rather relatively leisurely
and how you do it. Don't wait until like, don't be
like, hey, I'm going to show up in Bloomington 30 minutes before
you're probably not going to get to your seats until like Midway
through the first quarter. And that's assuming that you
find parking, which I think this year is going to be even more
problematic. So that somebody who comes from
Indy for every one last thing I was going Mention.
Yeah, for those who haven't been down in a couple of years, the
McNutt and Briscoe parking. Lots don't exist anymore,
they're gone, okay? There are dorms there now and so
if you are used because a lot of people would park in those dorm
spots that get here, early those don't need that they're not.
There there are new buildings, there people are living in them
so just be careful on that front.
Don't expect that to be there. Sorry, Scott, go ahead.
I know you're good. So if somebody has come from
Indy from, you know, from nine ten years for games, I will say
this that normally on Just an average, you know, Wednesday
afternoon. If I leave, I'm in Westfield.
If I leave my house, I can get to campus in an hour, twenty
five, an hour 30. It depends on where, you know,
what? Martinsville looks like, but
normally our 20, I can get to Bloomington.
I normally give myself two hours, travel time.
From my house, to the stadium on a game day, if I'm leaving a
little bit early now, you know, to me, it's like there's a new
in-game as A330 game is a seven game or kind of your standard
times. I'm going to go backwards in
time a seven o'clock game. Normally I try and leave here
around, like, it depends on what we're doing from a tailgate
perspective, but I'll try it. Try it.
Leave here or I'm like 1:00 or 2:00 is kind of my my go-to
because then I'm getting there around, you know.
It gets me there around 4 and that gives me a good couple
hours to have some fun. And and you know, I know this is
a question from that blast, we're going to get to but it's
like you almost have to agree on The Late games.
Like I'm either going to be. If I'm bringing my kids it's
like we're going to have more fun tailgating and I have to be
cool being the guy who leaves Early life and I know as a
college kid, when I was in my 20s, like I hate everyone who
leaves games are like, why did you pay for the ticket?
Like, why'd you do that? It's like your perspective
changes, when you pop out some kids and things just Jade's,
it's like it's hard to be get there early guy and fun tailgate
guy and I'm bringing my kids guy and I'm staying the whole game
guy like with a five-year-old. Like good luck.
You can do it more power to you. That's a different podcast.
I will say for the 330 games. It's also very easy.
I normally leave here around like 11 or 11:30 You're leaving,
honestly, that extra that extra hour.
If you can get yourself out of that window, everything evens
up. And honestly, I don't, I have,
I'll tell you some other routes to get down to Bloomington.
But normally, I just take 67 down and then I just check ways
and like if that little, if you know the road going across what
is it 39 that connects 67 to 37 or what is now 69 if that's
completely jammed and yeah I just take 67 down to Spencer cut
over. There's a A way you could get,
therefore, he stopped and Paragon.
You can take some back roads and hit 69, although I'm not sure if
that's still open that was my sneaky way when they were doing
work on 60-69. But normally, if you're leaving
it like 11:00 or 12:00 from Indy, you're going to hit
Martinsville about like 14, A330 game that normally is not too
bad. Although I will say, Michigan is
the one game, which we don't have at home this year, they
travel the most on that thoroughfare.
They also bring the most fans. They're going to hit you the
most on that traffic. Michigan.
Michigan State seems to bring the most anyway, the be
situationally aware, is what Scott's saying here, as far as
like, where the people of the other people are coming from
with this vulnerable, you know, my Ohio state, they're going to
come from, obviously, from Ohio, but they're going to take 70
over in Autumn go down to, you know, Columbus and cut over that
way. But anyway, give yourself just
that extra half hour to leave early and then you could
honestly just take the normal route, most games for 3:30.
I just take 67 cut across Martinsville because the traffic
hasn't backed up yet, right? I will say for Or a noon game.
It's tough for us like that. This is where I normally am.
Like I'm not going to help out much at a tailgate like I can
bring a bag of chips, you know, for us to get there to do, any
kind of tailgating. We have to leave here around
like 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning, which is a tough putt.
So normally I'm like, I'm just trying to hustle my ass out of
the door by 8:00 or 8:30. And then I'm like trying to beat
traffic and just trying to get there by 10:00 to 10:30.
But you know, It's just tough with kids to get there early.
So normally the noon games like I'm bummed the Cincinnati game,
I'm just not. To be much, you just have to
realize I'm just those are games are I'm not tailgating.
I'm just doing my best to get there and not miss kickoff.
Be honest with yourself, try it a couple of times, I'm sorry.
I mean, this is the thing, I think a lot of people will
they'll put themselves in for more than they can deliver when
it comes to doing this. And so, you just if you've never
done this before, give yourself extra time.
And the worst thing is, you spend an extra hour in
Bloomington that's, that's really, not a bad thing at all.
So something to keep in mind, as you move forward with is that,
by the way, that criminal question was from Ryan cost
about when to arrive and he asks, specific about the grass.
Lots and again, I would say get there, three hours ahead.
Get yourself set up. If you're going to do some
tailgating I take three hours minimum at that point with the
the grass, Lots because you have to park and then find the people
that you're trying to connect with and that becomes the other
issue. Okay.
Moving forward. Let's talk about the actual
hosting of the tailgate so we mentioned we got those three
different categories. Now I am as surprised as anybody
that I've turned into a tailgate host because I didn't tailgate
at all when I was in college, like I fact think I went to one
tailgate, it was the glue. The Kegs and Eggs, Ohio State
pregame tailgate when I you played Ohio State in 1998.
Several people that we know were there.
Mike Petrie, was there? Remember several other people?
But I didn't you, and I, you and I went to that.
And then we went to the gate. We were at the stadium, like,
super ehrlich's. Marry you?
And I were this front row for that game.
We were yes, we did that on purpose and then we lost it was
a pretty, it was at that one. As the as the, The Hangover set
in and the third quarter, it was like we made Bad life decisions.
Today with all of this, I caught a Snickers from Lynn Swann in
that game. That was a highlight for me.
Well, you you had a better game than I did but but I'm a
surprise to anybody that I host tailgates now, because that's
just not something that I did. And then I tell you what
actually opened my eyes to, it was when I taught at University
of Miami and the people that I was with my little Professor
group, they had a great tailgate setup and you know the eye that
was I was I looked at that and I was like, wow, this is pretty
cool. This is Something I'd like to do
if I'm ever anywhere else and I'm hosting and so I come back
to IU in 2009 and that was really how it all started.
The first thing I think to keep in mind, if you're going to be
hosting a tailgate, is that it's probably going to start
relatively small and that's a good thing.
And you know, we're talking about you and your family or
your close friends and then you can invite a few people but you
want to try to keep, you know, keep it to a relatively
straightforward limit and try to think about what kind of
tailgate you're looking to do. The very, you know, the to me,
the most basic and the most straightforward thing to do is
to, you know, get yourself a setup that allows you to do the
things that you want to do in the tailgate like not
everybody's tailgates. Are going to be the same.
And sometimes, you can walk through these tailgate setups
and you'll see these. You know, people have got like
eight tables and to canopies and you know, they've got a
generator and all that and it's like do you need all of that
know you don't what you really need?
Is your first time? I guess that's a I mean, you
turians tailgate, you can try for it your first time but you
really, it takes a while to actually get yourself oriented
in the proper way to figure out. Okay, where is everything
supposed to be? How am I supposed to set all
this up? How much room do I have?
And that is another thing, frankly, that can be affected by
where you're parking. You know, if you're in the
grass, lat, you've got the area where your car is at, and that's
where the grass, lots are a benefit because they allow you
to set up a canopy and do a bunch of things.
We have a little more room when you're in some of the the paved
Lots like the blue lot. You're a little more cramped in
terms of the space that you've got and that can create some
issues just in terms of being, you know, having too much stuff
and not enough place to put it or not getting there in enough
time to set up in a place that you want to.
So it's one of the reasons why I show up.
So we really to tailgates is because I know to do the setup I
want, I got to get a parking spot.
Next to the grass. I got to get everything set up
before people get there. I got to get the grill fired up
and I got to get the canopy set up and I got a chair set up and
everything like that. And so to some degree you have
to make a decision early on like how much of this do I want to
provide to everybody else? Because it can get a bit pricey
and it can get you suddenly realize after a while.
It's like, wow, I'm doing a lot of work for other people's
benefit. You know, here I am.
I'm getting up at 6:30 in the morning to make sure the truck
is loaded, so I can get over there 7:55, so that I can get in
hop out and like, quickly undo everything.
Great, you know, if it's like, hey tailgate starts at 11:00 in
the morning and we got a 7:00 game and I got all this time to
relax, it gets a bit trying, if you are, you know, getting ready
for a Rutgers home game, and it's the middle of November, and
it's, you know, 18 degrees outside while you're setting
everything up and you're like, what am I doing this for again?
Why? So, you really, as I often tell
my students who want to get into broadcasting as like you really
Gotta Love broadcasting if you want to get into it, because
there's going to be times where you're just like, why am I doing
this? If you're going to feel the same
about hosting a tailgate. So ask yourself if you want to
go through all of that. And if so who can you bring in
to assist with various elements of things?
Or do you just you just one of those?
Is it our do you and your spouse want to do it or do you have a
friend who's going to be there with you?
It's tough to do it all by yourself that said, if you've
made that go ahead, please. Yes.
As and again, I'm gonna bring more of the perspective of
somebody who comes to a tailgate from India, cause that's me, but
I will say, this is where I think like I go to Friends, Jeff
and carols tailgate. I think they have a nice kind of
low-key tailgate, but one thing they've done that I do on like
we take a lake house, trip every year.
You know, we have it, we have kind of packing list that we
keep on Google Sheets for the last five or six years.
What I do is the minute we leave.
I automatically copy that and make a packing list for next
year. And then, when we're on the
trip, it's like, who I really wish I had.
Like, you know, I wish I had like this fishing gear.
It's like, I just put it on the list like by this for next year
and like literally when I come home from our trip I buy five or
six things Things on Amazon like, we need to get a raft.
We need to get this stuff for my fishing gear like this year.
It was like getting a bunch of fishing gear stuff for like put
the lines on correctly stuff like that.
It's like I just buy it the next year.
It's like I know it's good. You can do the same thing with a
tailgate like the first time you go and you can do it throughout
the year but just keep a list of like, all right, here are the
five things that I need that. We need a table at Jeff and
Carol, then have a table, they got a table, they got the tent,
like just start building it up. But at the end of each tailgate
just be like, all right, here's the stuff that I need for next
time or next year and just kind of build it that way.
Just keep a little list of things that you wish, like, I
wish I had Like get it. Yeah I mean what I started out
with was pretty straightforward to set up, I bought a canopy and
canopies aren't great. Like you're going to probably
replace your canopy every two years even if you take care of
it and or unless you want to buy like a super-expensive canopy
and then it's like, well, is that really worth it either?
So generally, you can just buy the regular.
I would get, I will say this, get the squared canopy, get the
ten by ten, don't get the 8 by 10 because you never Experienced
early morning, frustration quite like trying to figure out which
is the short side of the canvas and which is the long side of
the canvas. When they look about the same,
as you trying to set it up, but by a canopy, my suggestion would
be by something other than red, because everybody's, and I
utility it's gonna have a red canopy.
And if you're trying to tell people where to find you and
you're like, Hey we're in the grass lot.
We got a red canopy. It's like, hey guess what, so
does everybody else. So you may want to consider, I
think the first canopy that we had was purple because I figured
there was Small amount of crossover with opposing team,
certainly Northwestern. But Northwestern has no fans, so
they're not going to travel and you're not going to be confusing
people. So we start with a canopy, we
started with a small Grill. Now, I am at home.
I am the biggest proponent of charcoal that you'll find.
Like, I don't use propane, I don't have a gas grill, I have a
gas grill for tailgating, and I got one of those little Weber Q
1000 You know, which with the they take the little green
propane, screw in canisters and the reason for that is
essentially ease of use when you're grilling.
The last thing you want have to worry about in addition to all
of the you know, the grease and the grime that you build up with
that. You don't also want to have to
deal with a bunch of coals that are still potentially warm.
I mean there was a whole Allstate commercial about a you
know somebody's car blowing up because of that sort of thing.
So certainly you can use charcoal.
I would much prefer to use charcoal but I think in this
situation, gas does just as good of a job and you don't need a
huge Grill. Like an even if you're cooking,
450 people. You don't have to have all the
food ready at once because quite frankly, you're not going to
have a lot of situations where everybody's eating
simultaneously. So getting a relatively small,
surface gas grill, that's easy to clean easy, to transport.
Preferably something with a stand so that you're not bending
over having to deal with it on the ground.
Those are some good tips but that was essentially all we
started with those two things and then a white table to put
stuff on. And if you have those three
things that canopy a grill And a table.
You know, that's probably going to set you back.
I would say somewhere in the vicinity of maybe $300 $350
that's not that bad. It's a great investment because
that set up right there. I still have the grill that I
got. When I first started doing the
tailgating, I got it like 10 years ago, it's still going
strong. Like there's no problems with it
at this point. So if you make the right
purchase is early, you're going to have a lot better success
down the line. Yeah I will say my friends Jeff
and Carol. They still go with the charcoal
grill and it's it's a bit of a pain when we have little kids
running around and so it's like always like just watch out,
don't hit it like a couple times, they've knocked it and
it's like, it gets jostled and then it's like they have to deal
with knocking the coals out. Is it cold?
Like I'm with you on the grill? But a great.
Again, these small Grill works, like they have just the little,
the smallest sized Weber that you can sell like whatever the
10-inch. Like it's just a tiny little
Grill but you can just again you're probably not cooking
fillet. You're doing hot dogs, are
Burgers. Like you could you can bang
through those really quickly. And so I think that's a great
point. The smaller Grill will get you
done. You don't need the big grill
because they have a lot of people kind of coming through
and it is, you know, it's just people kind of coming through
for 10 minutes here, 20 minutes. They're normally, I would say
it, most of the tailgates, there's very few kind of, like
I'm also going to be at this tailgate for the full four hours
like right? You know better than I do.
But most people are kind of transient and so it's like
having 10 hotdogs ready as good at all times.
And you can Bang that out and she I think the small girl is a
great idea, but yes, going to tailgates that I've gone to with
charcoal. It's like that seems to be more
of a pain dealing with charcoal and Amber management than you
want to deal with Timber Management in there.
Although sometimes you get the wrong people to your Patel gate,
you have to do some Amber management to anyway.
So as far as food, here's what I would suggest have a theme for
each tailgate that you do map it out and And you know, try to
rotate things a little bit throughout the course of the
Season. Try to shift with the seasons, a
little bit. You everybody has Grand ideas
but there's a reason why probably 70% of the tailgates
that you go to. It's hamburgers and hot dogs
because those things they travel.
Well, they're easy to set up, they're easy to cook, you know,
they're, they are easily plopped in a delivery vessel whether
that's a bun or a, or a bun. I guess they're both plopped
into buns. You could put a hot dog in a
burrito. I Gasps maybe or a taco shell.
I've done that before a couple of times and I get weird looks
just like you're giving me a weird look right now.
But I've done the Dorito, I've done the hot dog, burrito at
home when I'm bad, but a buns. There's, but there's, you know,
you don't want to again, unless you really have gotten bedded
in, in tailgating, you don't want to go overboard with what
you bring, and you have to keep in mind that a lot of foods.
Don't actually cook as well as you would hope that they would
or don't transition particularly well in that environment, like
yeah. For somebody like had steak at
one point, you know, they brought to a tailgating State
just doesn't work at a tailgate for a bunch of reasons.
Not the least of which is it's hard to eat with your hands.
It's, you know, like, you know, and and it also doesn't cook up
in a way that I think works well in other forms.
Like, you could do steak sandwiches and stuff like that,
but that's like a multi-step process to, actually make a good
steak sandwich. You can't just put a slab of
steak down and and then put it on a bun because people will
have trouble chewing it. So, you know, be conscious of
what you're cooking and what order you're doing things.
And we're going to get into like the different times of day, a
little bit later on in this discussion, but try to have a
plan and try to make sure that what you're you're cooking is
complementary to the main course.
Now, I always buy the main course myself.
Like so we're going to do hot dogs and hamburgers for instance
as the host. I will just go purchase all of
that myself a because then I know it's there because there's
nothing worse than somebody saying.
Yeah, sure. I'll The hot dogs and then they
show up and they have beer but they don't have hot dogs here.
Like where are the hot dogs like?
Oh, I forgot. You know.
It was like well now the whole tailgates kind of screwed
because if you don't have that, what are you going to serve?
So if you're the host, you just have to take that mantle on
yourself of buying that main course.
And then the other thing that I would suggest is give people
specific assignments. If you know, you've got five or
six other people coming to the tailgate assign them.
Okay? You are going to bring Brand
name chips, you are going to bring, you know, the buns or
whatever stuff like that and then figure out when people are
going to arrive because there's nothing worse than parceling out
the duties to people, and then having somebody who's supposed
to bring the Buns, not show up until like 40 minutes before the
tailgates over. And then it's like, what are we
eating on? Well, and I'll say to as
somebody who's coming, so I do this, I'm with, like, Jeff and
Carol. We go to their tailgate all the
time. We do that.
Like, we have a text chain on like Wednesday, Thursday.
The guy who's bringing, what as somebody who's coming from out
of town. So, to speak, I never have asked
and the never wanted to take anything as part of a main level
course. So it's like if we're having hot
dogs and burgers like I don't want the burgers and the Buns
because the worst thing is that even if I leave earlier like
let's say the kids are just dragging assets.
Like we're running late and then we hit traffic in Martinsville.
Like nothing is worth knowing that I have all the hot dog buns
and I'm not going to be at the tailgate and time.
So as somebody who's coming from out of, you know, from Indy,
always pick. Nothing.
Like we always take chips or dip or drinks or something that if
it's like if it's an hour late the tailgate isn't going to be
just stopped in its tracks me. It's going to suck a little bit
but it's like not having chips is not the end of the world and
we get there it's like hey or like desserts are great bring
brownies and cookies. It's like all right like we can
always Crush those at the end of the tailgate.
I will say one thing here you mentioned brand, name chips and
you mentioned this on your last the podcast you didn't like June
talking about food. I have also a huge proponent of
spend the Extra money and buy the brand name food, but I will
throw this out there when it comes to chips.
Maybe it's just Indy has a better Kroger Distribution
Center. The Kroger Brand barbecue chips.
I find are at the same level as like, a Lay's barbecue chip and
believe me, I come from the world of like don't there's no
need to buy generic cereal like by the name brand, spend extra
get the higher quality meat. I am with you, man.
We are simpatico, I just got to give a shout-out to the Kroger
Brand barbecue chips. I see.
Is really dig those. So this is my man.
This is Scott trying to save money and our next tailgate.
So at your tailgate I'm gonna bring, we're going to do a blind
taste to the put it on Instagram.
We're going to have a barbecue lays and barbecue Kroger chips.
And I want to see if you can spot, which is a different,
which one is better, to be fair. I don't like barbecue lays
either. Actually Glazer Low quality.
So but a high-quality chip of your choosing versus anyway
we'll make. We'll make it happen.
Will do this will do the Pepsi challenge that I was a joke.
Okay. Calm down.
Now maroon. I'm gonna go back to the maroon
Hoosiers. Comment.
We're so we got the, where to park down Traditions.
Yeah, I mean, there aren't really a lot.
It's one of the cool things about IU football, is that
there's not your own. You can kind of make your own
tailgating Traditions. I mean, look, my tailgate didn't
exist 10 years ago and now like some people talk about About it.
I guess it's kind of a tradition and that, you know, but that's
that's you have a, it's a blank slate at this point to a large
degree. I would recommend and this is
one of the things where it's nice to have multiple people.
I would recommend once you get everything set up.
One of my traditions is I like to take a walk not around the
entire perimeter of the football area, but at least enough like
maybe a 10 15 minute walk. So I can see what's going on
elsewhere and just get a feel for Festivities.
Now there are some cool things that pop up in the Lots, you
know. There's a what is that little
miniature band that goes spot or Philharmonic or his phonics?
Yeah, I forget the name of the band.
I apologize will get corrected on Twitter.
I know. But that's great when they come
by your tailgate have some tip money.
They do an awesome job, right? There's always a phony, the Sim
phony. There we go with phony Pho.
NY, if you're afraid If you're close enough, if you're in that
kind of the festive area that we talked about, you'll see the
marching band go by and the kids always love that.
Sometimes they're sometimes the walk is if you're on the right
side of the stadium, that's a good thing to go, check out and
that normally happens what about two hours?
Three hours before the game somewhere in that range.
Yeah, two hours 90 minutes. Yeah.
And that's why the green orange blue lot is great because it's
like, you can kind of see that you can see people start
assembling, they kind of make that that hallway.
And it's like, from Assembly Hall down to Memorial Stadium.
So, you can kind of see that. And it's like if you're at your
Tailgates like, oh, I'm gonna go take my boys if we're gonna go
do the walk and then come back. So like that's why that's a
great area versus to your point. The purple lat you do miss a lot
of that stuff. But then that side of that.
I mean sometimes there's some strange stuff that pops up.
Like I remember this is like 45 years ago.
There was a calliope on the on the North End of Assembly Hall
and it just was playing like weird piped music.
And it was like why is this here?
And I mean if there was a historical Reason for it to be
there, but it was just kind of, like, I don't understand why
this has popped up, and then it was gone.
And I don't think I've seen it again since then.
But those are the main things. I mean, it's really not a lot as
far as Traditions other than the ones that you're making yourself
right now and that is I think actually a positive if you're of
that mind and I think a lot of the tradition is just like to
some of your getting to know your neighbors because you'll
notice very quickly, it's the same people that have larger
tailgate setups at IU and like, we're we always end up next to
Like Carrie docherty and that group because they're always
over in that grassy area, right? Where the green lot and the
orange lock come together and we're normally in that as well.
So that to me is one of the better tradition is just like
getting to know the people that are around you and you end up
seeing those same people. Every every time.
I mean, if you're really cutting it close I will say the other
tradition is. I think it's, you know, they set
off are, you know, firework like the the blast, the ones that
don't aren't fireworks. That makes sound of the cannon
shots, but they do those like, what 10 minutes.
Game starts, right? It's a right around there.
But I mean, obviously, if you're close enough, you see, you know,
when the flag is going up, that's national anthem.
It's time to start heading in some of those things that are
going on, and I will say, if you're into that the pregame
tradition, this is more tailgating.
But, you know, me and the boys. We like to get into the boys.
Love the marching band. It's just, it's kind of fun and
festive for them. We like to be in the stadium at
least 20 minutes for Kit because that's about when the marching
band comes out. They do, you know, the the IU
fight song, they do the I Actual frangipane.
They like the national lamp and they like kind of the, you know,
how they always do like the, let's take a trip, they do like
the same five songs every year before every game.
So I mean, if you're into that, I'd say about 20 minutes before
game time, you want to get in and watch some of the bay and do
their stuff best local food, and drink.
So this is an interesting one, you know, because one of the
things that, you know, a lot of what we talk about with tailgate
is bringing your own stuff to the table.
Tailgate I will say like for certain things like breakfast
tailgates. Especially you may not want to
do a big cooking set up yourself a because there's less time and
be because breakfast is hard to do by yourself unless you're
really good at cooking and you've got just a small Grill,
it's hard to do like a good breakfast set up overall, if you
don't have a generator or whatever, one thing I would
suggest is, you know, Square Donuts is always open early
Crescent. Donuts is always open early.
There are options. Where you could go pick some
stuff up and bring it. If you get there early enough,
both of those are really good options for different reasons.
I mean Square Donuts because it's it's located really
conveniently at 17th and college.
There's also one over on the Eastside Crescent, everybody
knows where that is, it's on Kirkwood, there's there's
there's options available there. There's some local breakfast
places. You know, crumble Bakery is a
pretty good place to pick up some things.
You may want to consider going that route because you can pick
Cup coffee and donuts, or, you know, coffee and pastries of
some sort and bring that to the tailgate.
That's a good way to get the day started, you may not need
anything else until you go into the stadium at that point and
and that, so that's another reason to get there early.
You know, as far as trying to find places to eat afterwards
because a lot of people if it's a noon kick they'll be done by
3:30 and if you're going to make a day of it, you're like, well
we'll stick around Bloomington and we'll eat which I would
recommend doing anyway because that lets the traffic filter out
and so forth. I mentioned this a little On the
last time, we talked about this podcast wise, go outside of the
boundaries of where you would normally go in Bloomington, to
try to find places to eat. Because, you know, one of the
things to keep in mind is that Nick's is always going to be
jammed on football Saturdays, Yogi's.
It now is going to be jam because it's downtown on
football Saturdays. Mother bears, at least to the
downtown mother or the in them in the city.
Mother Bear's is going to be jammed.
So think about some of the options.
Options outside of that. And if you're not familiar with
those, there's plenty of good places that we can talk about
throughout the course of Bloomington, you know, Upland
has gotten really popular. So uh, Plum, is that used to be
like the go-to place like it's close to downtown but it's not
right. Downtown go there at this point.
You know, probably try it certainly but I'm guessing that
that's going to be pretty packed.
You know. So you've got places like
Juanita's where I ate dinner the other day.
Nice, Mexican place. It's on Kirkwood just west of
downtown. You know, and generally not like
overly packed, might be a good place to try going.
You've got c 3, which is a nice restaurant with a decent amount
of outdoor seating. So, at least early on, in the
season might be good that's down by Renwick Village, which is
just south of the mall. Another place, that might be
worth checking out. You've got Southern Stone.
And one of these places are compensating us on this.
I'm just kind of rattling them. All Southern Stone, which has a
decent amount of seatings. Got nice.
Big, indoor area, got some outdoor seating, might be a good
place to try. Look around the periphery If you
have questions about specific places, you can always ask us on
Twitter or you can ask us on Facebook and we can give you a
read on things but there's more places to eat than just the the
main traditional places that everybody goes and you may just
want to go to those traditional places, that's fine, but if you
could hit up a fat Dan's or if you could hit up a DaVinci or an
Austria or even go out, you know as you're driving back through
Nashville, stopping at hard, truth Hills or some place like
that. There's a lot of Options at your
disposal. Try, broadening your horizons a
little bit. I wouldi, I don't even have a
list of, like, what I think the best places are because frankly,
every place I just rattled off, I would choose to go eat at like
right today, if I was going out to eat, so you're going to have
a hard time going wrong with those sorts of things.
I would recommend just building that in to what you're planning
on doing and that way. Yes, you're going to get home a
little bit later, but you're also not going.
If you're going to spend two hours in traffic, you might as
well spend. Two hours at a restaurant as
opposed to you know just driving that whole time.
I don't know. Scotty have any thoughts on
that? No, I think you you live in
Bloomington. You better know the Bloomington
restaurant scene. I will say for those coming from
Indy, I do like in Martinsville. I mean Martinsville is like a
wasteland of fast food joints, I will say that Beefcake Burgers
is Right? Were 39 and 37 kind of connect.
It's a great little local burger place.
Check that out. We've hit that a lot of times on
the way home or the way up there, the waffle Is a good
restaurant up in Martinsville as well.
And there's a couple there's a good Wingstop place on 67 up
toward like in that. And some of that new stuff
they've built on the right side, we are going up 2nd but there
are some spots in Martinsville. I would try those too, but
Martinsville is kind of a fast-food stop.
And I think, I think you all the places you hit are fantastic.
And yeah, I mean dude I love Mother Bear's.
Every time we go to Bloomington my boys, want to go to Mother
Bear's but everybody goes to Mother Bear's and so especially
on The game day, it's just it's going to get crushed.
And so that's almost a separate podcast about no matter which
one you go to. It's like, how do you get some
other Bears on Game Day? What's the best time to do that?
Like, that's almost like a separate tailgate and I love
with again. I love all the Bears and I love
to eat nothing more than Mother Bear's 24/7, but it's like I'm
with you. If you're going to be there for
a game day, try something else because you're going to have a
much better time and not be waiting two hours for food
because everybody goes to both both locate.
Yeah, it's a thing and even the new location gets slammed Gently
and you got other good options if it is D'Angelo's and there's
but Shadows. If you want pizza that are
relatively close to the old one you've got.
There's other other places. Swing in Pizza, on the, on
College Avenue. Striped ology asked why there
isn't more after game tailgating and, you know, to some degree.
It's a decent question. You were losing and Everyone by
goes home. That's how I that's honestly.
Historically been the issue. I think you might see people
sticking around a little bit more but there just isn't much
of a culture around that and And I do think it would be
interesting if that was actually what was going on.
Now I to some degree, I do think they in some spots, they'll
close the Lots or want to start clearing people out of the Lots
because they want to go through and clean everything.
I don't think there's a final clear out time although I will
look into that and let everybody know I'd I will also say though
that in the purple lot those RVs are generally there that you
know the rest of that night in many cases and so you do get
some after game tailgating going.
Up there, it's just that around the certainly in the grass lot.
And in the, the festive, Lots is we've taken to calling them.
You generally, those people are a lot more likely to leave early
but it's not the worst idea in the world hanging out after the
game. Typically, I mean a lot of it
like Scott said, if there's wins and people are excited, I think
that will actually get more people to do that and so I'm
hoping that this year will be that kind of the Year.
Let's dive into it. Sorry, it's a great question but
that's a great question and I'm not being trite but it's like it
is like Let's just try and get fans to stay through the game.
Then we'll worry like tailgating after the game.
Like, how about we just get students and fans to stay the
entire, you know, the entire fourth quarter?
And then we'll worry about tailgating afterwards but you
know, winds winds will solve. All right, let's get to some
specific questions. A lot of you ask specific
questions. I'm going to try to nail as many
of these as I can. Okay.
Griffin Gonzales from the Hoosier Network asks, what food
is not being touched on the tailgate table other than
carrots and or Celery. Well, you know, I'll say this.
I think that people always over purchase cookies, for tailgates.
Like, you know, the the number of people for whom their
contribution is a container of Kroger like ice sugar cookies.
And then those just kind of any of those.
They just sit there and it's just kind of like, okay, is
anybody going to eat these or, you know, chocolate chip cookies
or things like that especially ones that haven't been baked by
you? If you're buying store-bought
stuff, I found that, that is something believe it or not,
that that people don't really go for when it comes to tailgating.
And we always I think overestimate how much sweet
stuff people want, its tell gates are more of a Savory
Affair. Like, you know, and I certainly,
you'll have some sweet items that will pop up.
But yeah, cookies. And then honestly any any
dessert that has to be dished out with a spoon is is going to
largely sit there without Being touched at a tailgate.
These are the these have been the things that I've found over
the course of time. Also believe it or not, people
over by deer. Pretty significantly, people
will bring a 12-pack when a six-pack would probably do and
so you just want to make sure you're coordinating.
If You're just showing up somewhere, you know, I would
say, bring bring two things like bring, you can bring two
six-packs of a craft beer or you could bring a six-pack Pack of
craft beer and a bag of something or you could bring
like bag of chips or bag of whatever chips can get over down
to. So like don't don't go too much
on that front. Don't over bring bring enough
that. If all you did was consumed the
stuff that you brought as a guest at a tailgate, you'd be
satisfied because the idea here is we're going to share, like
I'm going to bring part of this, and I'll have a little bit of my
own thing, but then you'll also have some of it and then I'll
have some of what's already at the table, but To be the things
I would say. And it's funny Griffin.
I actually do eat the celery at tailgates.
That's actually an underrated tailgate food.
You get some, you get like a jar of peanut butter that people can
dip or a knife into and put on celery.
That's that's not a terrible tailgate food.
But those would be my answers anything, you've observed Scott
isn't as funny. I like the carrots like that's
their. You carrots instead of my kids?
No, I think you're dead on with the cookies as someone who's
brought stuff. This is again a spot.
Go a little bit of scale that the normal just bag of Kroger
cookies. And like everybody has those
sugar cookies with the icing on what you're okay.
But you can go different. They're like we like the little
mini chocolate chip cookies. Always seem to taste better than
the big fat ones. Those are kind of people will
dig on to those. I think, if you're bringing
desserts, you know, sometimes going a little bit off the
board. Like we've had a lot of success
with, like, chocolate donut holes as a dessert.
It's good and it's good, the breakfast room with even good
for a 7:30 game. It's I got something different
people, kind of hit those and I think you hit it.
I would also say like the big, you know, casserole tub of This
is a a chip dip. It seems like that never gets
like a bean dip is like people will kind of go at it but it's
like you got a spoon it now, I mean with covid who knows how
people are going to feel about like sharing a dip and it's I've
seen those always seem to be like 2/3, full and then it's
like those sour and don't take well, the elements.
And those seem to be like, if you're showing up late, you're
not just going to crush in 20 guacamole.
It's been sitting out three hours.
I can't wait to dig into this happy and thing and those always
seem to go kind of big out. So if you can somehow
Prepackaged those, I think that would be better but I think you
hit everything else. Carry your casks has Broadband
cell service Wi-Fi, improved enough in the orange lot for me
to bring a hot spot. A fire stick at a television
know. Yeah well we don't know because
frankly it's been two years since we were out there doing
things and I mean I can stream NBC Sports Network on my phone
and in the tailgate lot but not when there's other people there.
So I do think first of all, Rather than the fire stick.
If you can stream off your phone and then Port that to a
television, that's probably going to be a better choice
because it's less equipment. But look, I think especially
this year with this many people that are going to be in those
lots. I would not plan on being able
to use Wi-Fi or 5G to be able to connect.
I mean, I've tried for years and I have always had very, very
poor success. Now, where, you know that, I
don't know if they still sell these and they May not be worth
the investment unless you've got a really big setup, but I do
think that those portable DirecTV setups that can be a
good thing to do. But then you essentially you've
purchased an entire different television package just for
tailgating and it's like was this worth it for six weekends
out of the Year? Probably not so Carrie
unfortunately, I just I don't have a lot of faith right now,
and I'd love to be proven wrong. But as of right now, no I
wouldn't plan on being able to do that and I would say my love
the idea. But you see that a little Bit in
some of the purple lot where you have that the RVs that have the
Satellite Dish up top. But I will say for most people
at the tailgate. It's like rarely is there a game
outside of the IU game that I care enough about to not just
check it out like someone and by the way if something's happening
is crazy, it's like oh my God like you know Notre Dame is
losing by 50 points. Like your kind of some little
have it somewhere and you walk and check out normally is check
on your phone and see the highlights like we're all
connected enough like I've never been in a tailgate for an IU
game and felt like I'm missing something.
One else is happening in the Sports World.
Yeah, it's I will. I have toyed with the idea of
having a television there, that just plays old IU football
victories on a loop. But I haven't quite haven't
quite gotten to that point yet. I might step it up for this
year. We'll see.
Okay. Some other comments and
questions. I you artifacts asks, what is
your go-to breakfast option for a noon kickoff?
I'll say if I'm cooking it myself this is where the
breakfast sandwiches come in and to me, that is the most elegant.
That you can do. It's also the most customizable
generally. What I do with breakfast
sandwiches is as follows. I think I might have talked
about this on the last podcast but I'll go ahead and repeat it
by like G or you know some other form of biscuit and cook those
the night before and let them cool and then put them in a bag.
And then I would also recommend just thinking about okay, what
all am I going to be putting on this like what?
So what I will do is I will make Make a proprietary sandwich
spread which you know, generally has some combination of
mayonnaise and barbecue sauce and some spices and and just a
little bit of Tang going in there and I'll make that the
night before and I'll kind of premix that into a jar.
I'll put it back in the refrigerator that'll go in my
cooler. The next morning I'm by the way
I forgot to mention by a cooler in addition to the other things
we told you to buy, that's like the fourth item that you really
need and then I'll figure out what meets I'm going to be.
Do you remember, you're keeping in mind?
This is breakfast. There's generally, three
different meats that you might want to consider one is bacon.
One is sausage. And one is chicken, and then, so
have have some combination of those plus then select your
cheese. This is one of those situations
where I think having a couple of different types of cheese.
Certainly, you want to have your traditional American slices.
Because as much as people criticize American cheese, it
melts really well and everybody's used to the Flavour.
So don't worry too much about that and then I'd have something
else. Have a white cheddar.
Have a monterey jack something that's in Pre slices, that you
could very easily peel out and put on the sandwich as you go
through things. And then what you do, you got
your, get your table set up, get your biscuits out, get bring a
whole thing of aluminum foil, and then essentially tear off.
Small sections of aluminum foil. Put the biscuit Have it on that.
So one side, one side, spread your secret sauce.
On one side, put your meat. But your cheese.
You may want to put onion on there.
Some people don't like onion, I generally avoid the onion just
because nobody misses it, if it's not there, wrap it you're
going to probably have to cook the meat at the tailgate.
So that's the first thing that I'll do I'll cook the meat
before I put it on the sandwiches and I'll kind of do
it right before. I'm putting it on the sandwiches
that way it stays hot or crispy or what have you.
You could pre make It but I don't think you get as good of a
result that way. So, once you've got your cooked
meat, put that on the sandwich, along with the cheese wrap it,
put it back on the grill and then just don't let it burn.
You got to turn it over a few times your whole lobster.
Like your whole Focus here is getting that cheese to melt
properly and once you do that you pull it off.
You hand it to the person. You can customize this based
upon who the individual is. It's a huge hit because people
are like, wow! I just got a sandwich made just
for me. And no two sandwiches have to
necessarily be the same. That might come up and just want
cheese on there biscuit and you can do that, some people person
might want double meat or a mix of meat, you can do that and to
me with a minimal amount of action, you know, of
preparation, it's a meal that you're not going to get most
other places and it's one that frankly, you do better, I think
than even a lot of restaurants when they put breakfast
sandwiches together. So that would be my selection.
You have you have any that you would focus on Scott?
I think you nailed it that I'm hungry.
I'm ready to go. The only thing I would say is I
love if you can fit stuff to do in a breakfast sandwich, set up
for what you're talking about. But a this is probably just a
different pot and underrated meet for breakfast and eggs is
Teresa like oh yeah, I am in love with chorizo but it's I
it's tougher for what you're talking about doing.
They do sell like, sliced chorizo, but I've only seen it
like sold in. Like Puerto Rico is not
available much around here, but yeah, I mean not what you're
looking for. It's tough.
What? Then a butcher block here
Wilmington, does often sell a ground chorizo?
And I think fresh thyme might as well.
At this point, I would avoid the tubes of chorizo unless you
really know what you're doing. Because that stuff has daunted a
lot of people who are otherwise good Cooks.
They're just not sure what to do with.
I count myself in that category, never really quite gotten, my
head wrapped around that. The other one is the other thing
I will say on this is egg, an egg can be a little bit
trickier. If all you have is a grill.
But what I have done is I've I'll invest in a small cast iron
skillet which I'll put on the grill and if you crack an egg in
that break the yolk, and then just kind of let it sit there
for a little bit. You obviously want to grease it.
First, you can put egg on the breakfast sandwich as well.
And I find that that makes a big difference.
And so, don't forget the eggs, I guess would be my point.
I think, you know, if you're not, if you don't have the
capacity to do all of that, I'll go back to what I said earlier,
a couple of dozen donuts from Crescent, get some coffee, and
some coffee, you're good to go. Like, you don't have to go to
all of that trouble if you don't want to, and that's one of the
beautiful things about breakfast tailgate.
Think outside of that, you know, you can do what I just described
but instead of biscuits you could make waffles ahead of time
and then break them down into little individual things because
you can eat very easily, you know, a sandwich off of a
waffle, probably not Belgian waffle, you want to get the
thinner ones but that works just as well, it's essentially kind
of like going to Waffle House. So there's little things like
that. And what you want to do is just
take your favorite. Like some things just don't work
like doing pancakes at a tailgate.
Eight bad idea because you need a fork and you need a plate and
that can be very complicated. You want to focus on things that
are easily picked up and eaten without needing a plate.
If you can avoid it, there are some exceptions.
Like if you want to do a pulled pork thing, you probably going
to not worry about the plates. Everybody will be fine with
that, but if you can ask, it's and gravies to as a tough, yes,
biscuits and gravy is a tough one.
But if you can, if you can move towards an environment where
something can be picked up and eaten and tasty, you're doing
pretty good. Particularly if it's got
Built-in container like that aluminum foil that I was talking
about. So I guess I'll grow long to
Stew Jackson of the LA. Rams question, what are your top
five tailgate Foods e? That's a tough one, because it's
like my I will, I will say, certainly the breakfast sandwich
set up. If I can count that as one would
definitely qualify as one of my top 5 tailgate Foods, I think a
pulled pork sandwich with the right sauce and the right bread.
Red is certainly one of my top five.
I think a straightforward hamburger if it's cooked right?
If the meat is of good quality and if you've got the right
fixin's, there is certainly in that mix because it's right up
there. I think those are my favorite
Mains. And then, as far as sides, I'll
throw I think, I think baked mac and cheese that you bring to.
The tailgate is always a huge hit.
It's a it's a great flavor. Everybody loves it from kids all
the way up to adults. It's generally if you bake it
properly, it's generally pretty easy to like pop into a solo cup
and have people eat out of that and, you know, one of the cool
things that you can do is you can use Solo cups as a delivery
vessel for a variety of different things.
So like I just mentioned, the pulled pork, you don't have to
do sandwiches. You don't have to do plates, you
can do cups, you can plop some pork, some coleslaw and some mac
and cheese into the same cup. And essentially people can mix
and match as they so desire. Put some barbecue sauce on it.
It's really it's a tasty set of all the way around.
So I would definitely throw mac and cheese is like my top side
on that and then I think just a good old-fashioned bratwurst,
probably the other really top-line tailgate food.
It's easy to eat. It's easy to cook.
It's always a like it's got a lot of flavors to it and you can
customize it about 50 different ways.
So that would kind of be my the the core of what I like to do.
Eyes. Yeah.
Bratwurst over hot dogs all day long.
Cupcakes are also a nice hit normally for dessert.
They kind of mix-up with the the cookies.
I will say this. I'm with you a thousand percent
like over the last five years, I've found the Solo Cup to be so
useful 2000 different areas. We buy the chub pack.
At Costco, one thing we do at the lake house for breakfast.
I think could be an interesting tailgate Edition so Gail and
feel free to use this. We will just on vacation, do
Solo cups. For breakfast with cereals, you
just throw the cereal in the Solo Cup.
You put the milk in there, eat it out of the cup and then when
you're done, you just drink the milk.
It's a great with a Cocoa Puffs or cold and G that you get the
milk. That could be a fun, I've
actually not see this, but that could be a fun tailgate.
As long as you have some coolers to keep the milk cold.
That could be a fun breakfast set up where you just have five
or six cereals, a bunch of Solo cups and it's like, get your,
get your cereal, get your milk, good to go in a Solo Cup.
Eat it. Drink it out the door.
Yeah, it's again. So much of this is Wiring your
brain from what you normally do in the kitchen to a mobile
kitchen. Essentially, the kitchen that is
out there in the tailgate fields are in the tailgate, lots and is
rewiring your brain to. Okay?
Well, what would I do if I didn't have plates, or what
would I do, if I didn't have this, or that those are, those
are the things to keep in mind. Let's see.
Some other questions that we had.
So actually another breakfast related thing and Alex G brought
this up I swung by the doctor, geez.
See tailgate before the Ohio State match up and tried one of
these and he had a picture of it and it was a Pop-Tart on the
grill and that's another one where I would recommend giving
this a shot. I'm not a huge Pop, Tart guy but
I know many people are and you can just take your like instead
of putting a Pop-Tart in the toaster.
You can just take the Pop-Tart and put it in a like not the
hottest portion of the grill certainly but in a spot where it
can get warm and get a little bit toasty and it's easy to like
essentially kind of pick up with foil and Somebody.
And then they can eat that. Always for those who are
interested. Always a big winner and it's
always good to have like a box of Pop-Tarts with you just in
case someone's looking for something different.
Cause they also work very well as sandwiches, you know, it's a
bit on the sweet side, but if you can make a Pop-Tart sandwich
with like some bacon that's that's a different level of
flavor that you're not really thinking about is like a
combination. It's not, I don't do that.
I'm not I don't eat the Pop-Tarts myself anymore, but
when I was younger that that had a lot of appeal to It so in
Pop-Tarts and bacon. But again, a lot of it to go
back to the, you know, Alex asked, when did I get the idea
to try that? A lot of it is just what I just
said. It's rewiring your brain.
So it's like I don't have a toaster, but I've got this thing
that's essentially ready, and it just needs to be warmed a little
bit. Hey, boom.
I have a grill right here. Why don't I just take advantage
of that. That's essentially the thought
process that I go through on those sorts of things and I'm
always looking for other options.
So if you have a I don't, I mean there's things I don't think of.
So I'd be anxious to hear other people's thoughts.
If you have thoughts about what makes the most sense and what
might be good combinations, a couple of other items that I
wanted to get to Dan Corral asks, loaded baked potato or
loaded potato, skins at a tailgate unquestionably.
The answer is loaded, potato skins and those again, those are
things that you can prep ahead of time, you can bake them ahead
of time on the grill and then just stick them on the grill and
warm them. And those are, those are are
dynamite. And again, you can pick them up
and you can eat them. You don't have to have a fork or
something like that, that's where the loaded baked.
Potato can be a problem. You can certainly have a full
set up with plates and everything, but I always opt for
how do I get away from that as much as possible in this
environment? Let's see, some other questions
here. Jordan, Brock asks, what is the
best winter tailgate cocktail and why is it Crown Apple an
apple cider? Well, because I'm not a big
cider guy, I guess would be my response to that, my favorite
combo for winter tailgate cocktails.
And the one that probably gets me in the most trouble with
tailgates, is the hard truth Hills, cinnamon vodka combined,
with coffee that that Ah, but it's delightful that if you've
never had that hard truth, he'll cinnamon vodka.
Imagine Fireball. And then imagine the exact
opposite, like, it's that good. It's like it's in a high enough
level where you're like, you could just drink it straight.
If you wanted to, I wouldn't recommend that but that really
combos, well, with a bunch of different things.
I love it, just with coffee it. Spikes the coffee up a little
bit. Without changing the fundamental
flavor it mixes well with milk or cream or whatever.
And it keeps you warm the coffee.
Keeps you warm. Certainly apple cider if you're
a Her purse and I think that Crown Apple.
An apple cider combo is a good one, but I've done some ciders
before there and it's like unless you get the cider heat it
up to some degree, I don't think you get quite the same reaction
Insider can be difficult to heat up in that environment.
If you don't know what you're doing.
Yeah, I'm not a huge cider guy either.
I'm with you. Like honestly, you can start
having fun throwing anything and coffee like to me, it's like on
a winter day. I want coffee and Spike coffee,
you know, throw some Bailey's in there, like a great creamer, you
know, and we've I've mentioned before, I think on the spot that
there's so many good coffee options in Bloomington whether
it's Hopscotch, I mean there's tons of great coffee places and
bloomington's who get a local coffee, bring it and then
honestly just play around liquor like just throw it in like some
cinnamon Schnapps or just you know, some Bailey's that you
guys have fun, trying all kinds of liquor and all kinds of
coffee and most of it works. And for me, spiked coffee with
whatever liquor is going to be my go-to, winter drink.
Yeah. Let's see.
James Turner. The co-host of Terms in cash.
You haven't listened to the the over-under episode, you
definitely. Should he says, we need some
more gamble on galen's 5 Caitlin's tailgate?
Yeah, guys, I mean, you know, nobody knows the menu ahead of
time. Well, a couple people do so
that's why we don't do the gambling, but but James says, we
need more booze. Talk cocktails of choice.
Beer, pairings is wine. Okay, so this is actually, you
know, this is gets asked a lot and first of all, yes, wine is.
Okay, here's the thing I am Am I have become the opposite of who
I used to be, in terms of like I used to be kind of militant
like, well, you know, we're tailgating and so, you know, you
need to drink this, or eat this, or whatever and I have really
gotten to the point where I try to be as inclusive as possible
in terms of our offerings for food.
Like I was trying to have a vegetarian option available for
people. You know I do your culture and I
like you know well it's just I feel like if I'm going to be a
good host I want to make sure that even if I don't know who's
coming in, I want to make sure that they are taken care of and
So, you know, I try to have the other side of the aisle.
I try to have like a 12-pack of La Croix or something in the
cooler to go along with the beer in case you're not drinking
beer. Try to have a lot of water
available like stuff like that. Now as far as the actual
alcohol. Yes whines.
Okay, because I think for a lot of people wine just represents a
nice happy medium between. They don't like to be.
They don't like the bloated feeling of beer and they don't
like you know the or they or can't handle taking shots of
things or doing mixed drinks which are kind of complicated.
Skated. There are some great canned
wines out there. They're actually really good and
it rather than trying to bring bottles of wine which are
cumbersome. Certainly check out some of the
canned wine offerings. We might have a canned wine.
Specialist join us at some point to give you some tips on things
to purchase their butt. And if you're going to do that,
I mean Rose a or like a dry white, I think are probably the
best options, you know, get a, get a, get some Moscato, or get
some Summer Jose or whatever. Get some, maybe some some saw
Blanc in a can stay away from the Chardonnay.
I think that's not really a great tailgating wine for a
couple of reasons. Now, beer pairings, here's the
thing. I feel like as a society, we've
gone through this we're dark where, you know, back in the
90s, no one thought about the beer, they were drinking.
They just went and bought a 24-pack of whatever domestic was
available and then light, let's go.
Right then. And then in the 2010s, really,
we kind of had this Hey let's all drink ipas and let's have
hoppy beer and things like that and I kind of feel like that
pendulum swinging back a little bit.
We have so many good beer options locally here in the
state of Indiana and particularly here.
In Bloomington that I think you would be remiss in not including
those in your tailgate approach. And so, you know, if you wanted
to be with the same Brewery like if you're going to do Upland,
you know, a 12-pack of or, or more of champagne velvet and a
12-pack of Of dragonfly. It's a good combo like you've
got pretty much everything covered there.
You've got the people that don't like hoppy beer.
You got the people that like hoppy beer and I'll I really
like that Duality. Now I'm more of a I'm a darker
beer person or I'm a kind of traditional pilsner or lager
type of person. I've kind of drifted away from
the ipas but I like to have a couple of different choices
available and so either bring those myself or I will make sure
that certain types of beer being brought you, you would think
that people drink all the time, Time at tailgates.
They don't drink as much as you would think.
And and so overdoing it on beer. We have this tradition in this
house where people will bring beer and they'll put it in the
big marine cooler and then what to bring that home and stick it
in the mini fridge and then I'll put it all back in the mini
fridge will go to the next one. More beer will appear less of it
will disappear by the end of the year.
We've got all of this extra beer and a lot of it is like stuff
that people brought because they thought it was a good idea.
A lot of a lot of hard. Fall into this category, a lot
of like flavored stuff like Bud, Light Lime or something like
that. That stuff generally doesn't get
drank that often at tailgates and so I would avoid bringing
those. I would bring either straight up
to me like Bud Lights. Always getting drank and Miller
Lites. I was getting drunk, you know?
Or I would bring you know, reasonably priced craft beer.
One of my favorites to bring is Shiner Bock because that is a
nice kind of in the middle beer. That pretty much everybody will
drink. It's It tastes a couple of
degrees better than what you would expect a domestic would
taste like but it also is an overpriced try to think along
those lines. Also, if you can under any
circumstances, bring cans, don't bring bottles bottles, just
needlessly, add to the weight of things and I much, I'm a bottle
guy like I much prefer to drink a beer out of a bottle than I do
out of the can, but I think in this case, just just go with the
cans if you can find them, it's a much better setup.
And then on the Cocktails front. There's this really good.
Canned cocktails now and again, I really certainly you can have
the whole. Let's do our Mixology thing and
and poor people shots and, you know, but I would, I would
separate that from the cocktails Cardinal Spirits in town here.
Has some really good canned cocktails, they've got like,
four or five different ones and they're all really good.
You can buy them at big red. So, give those a shot.
And again, try to focus on portability, try to focus on
convenience It's you can certainly step things up as you
go forward, but I've also found that it's sometimes more trouble
than it's worth, trying to pour out of a large bottle into a
Solo Cup. It's much better to just have
something prepackaged that way, you know what you're getting.
So I think the one thing I will disagree with you on I think in
the last two years since your last tailgate, we are in the
midst of a Seltzer Revolution. So I think you're going to see
more of those brought. I'm I've been a fan of white
claws for a while. But I will say my thought on the
Seltzer stuff that I will talk about is if you're white claws
are good, they're a little bit sweet, I would venture toward
checking out High Noon. They're a little bit more
expensive but they're a vodka-based Seltzer.
They are just fantastic. They have a tropical 8-pack out
that has watermelon mango, passion, fruit, and pineapple,
they are delightful again a little bit more expensive, but
High Noon is definitely something to check out.
I think you, you Galen are going to see more white cause more
High Nunes, they're going to be Drank more.
A lot of those are going on. There's also I think it's backed
by Budweiser. So it's not like it's craft but
there are some pretty good like canned Margaritas that came and
Jack is out that I've had, those are good.
I can do like one of those. I can't like Creek a crush five
or six. Those I can normally do a couple
of high Nunes pretty quickly and getting a spot where I probably
shouldn't be driving home, which is good to go to the game in.
But I think those are I think High Noon over white claw, but
white claws are good. I think To see more of those.
The last thing I'll say to is you're talking about all this
definitely cans, you know. One other thing that you can
bring is somebody coming to a tailgate that's kind of a low
cost, but one of those things that, you know, might be like,
oh my God, I'm so happy. You brought this, bring five or
ten Koozies like they're super cheap you can just buy a pack of
kuzey somewhere and that's normally something especially
for like the the early season games and like september/october
if it's a hot day and people are having a couple of drinks.
You know you're the Koozie guy is like hey I got Koozies for
Everybody. It's like, oh my God, that's
great. People are going to throw the
Koozies on and like, you're out like, I don't know, 15 bucks.
Like, literally bringing Koozies might be more important than
bringing doughnuts for some of these things.
So, just keep that in mind to like something.
A lot of times people don't have, and that's a nice thing to
have. I will say, I've nothing against
cider or Seltzer's, I just noticed that people don't drink
them. They, well, I got because I'm
the one that ends up bringing everything got more popular in
the last two years. Well, we'll see, I just know
when I bring them home when I bring the, when I have to bring
everything home and I unpack it, there's more seltzer Sitting in
the cooler than there was when I started.
And it's you know I just think it's I think your your
attraction to the Seltzer is understandable.
But I would also say that you may be alone on this, I guess
would be my message to you so let's see.
Anyway moose a good friend Jeff asked.
Would it be a festive decision or a faux pas to make Cincinnati
style chili for our game against the Bearcats?
Well I would avoid making it because it's kind of gross.
First of all, it's because if you're doing it out of the, can
I just don't think that's very tasty?
And my wife eats Skyline Chili sometimes out of the cannot
often, like Janet me, she'll use the canned stuff and I'm just
like this is really, not very good, but the other thing is
like, what are you putting it on if you're putting it on hot
dogs. Okay, I hope that's it.
Don't bring spaghetti, don't ever bring spaghetti to a
tailgate. I also think if you're doing it
as a joke, It's probably not worth the joke if you're doing
it. Like, if you're doing it to
like, I don't know, represent us sacrificing the Bearcats or
whatever. I, it's, there's probably better
ways we could do that. Quite frankly, I like, I love
the idea, I think it's a better social media idea that it is
like an actual active idea. I think anything it was asked in
jest anyway. So Jim Hoff asks, what is an
underrated tailgate accessory? This is a tough one.
Because kuzey, I'll go back to my Koozie.
The I mean, I say And I think the Koozies are, I mean, they
matter the most when it's cold outside?
I think when it's hot it's not as big of a deal when it's cold.
It's a much bigger deal. You want to have a koozie?
I would say actually the most underrated tailgate accessory is
a chair that isn't going to break on you.
So like a lot of you'll go to Dick's Sporting Goods or
whatever and they'll have those tailgate style chairs but most
of them are really poor quality. They wear out Very quickly kind
of like the canopies we're talking about earlier, spending
a little bit more money and getting a chair that you can
carry with you and brand and bring along is helpful, just
because what I've noticed with a lot of those chairs is unless
it's of a relatively good quality.
They do Fray and break pretty easily because they're just not
built to handle people sitting on them and getting up and being
folded up and things like that. So, I guess that would be, you
know, a main answer, the other one that I'll say is and that
maybe this So much underrated. But things people forget about
is since you're cooking in an outdoor environment and serving
things, you know, make sure that you bring a trash bag with you,
make sure that you bring things to carry stuff in where you can
put stuff in and take it out. So like a tailgate bag or some
kind of accessory bag, where you can stick odds, and ends, and
spatulas and tongs and stuff like that.
That's, that's important to have that at your Disposal.
And that's something that we, it took us a while to figure out,
hey, we really need something to carry stuff along.
You don't need it need it because you can sometimes keep
that stuff in the car. But as you start, putting kids
in the equation and stuff gets lost and kind of scrambled all
over the place. Having a central spot where you
can put everything in is really, really helpful.
As somebody with kids, this again, depends know your crowd
if you're going to be in the grass, lot with a bunch of young
grads, doesn't matter. But I would say a very
underrated accessory is like something for kids to do or
screw around with during the tailgate.
So having a set of bags is always good, you know, honestly
what we've been doing is we bring, you know, just five or
ten Matchbox cars in a little ziplock bag.
If you if you're hosting a tailgate, you know, some people
are coming by with kids, like literally just go to Kroger
they're a buck apiece by 5 or 10 Matchbox cars and that'll keep
Entertained for a half hour, just something for kids to do
you know that isn't just them on a phone or something like that,
you know, get a football. They can toss around like just
something for you know, young kids to do and kind of mess
around. It doesn't have to be an
elaborate setup again bags Matchbox cars things like that
or just Super Nintendo switch. Something the app you want to go
there. Well I'm just say sub know but
something to keep them occupied is certainly important and
actually have a space where kids can go.
We bought one of those little canopy tents.
That's like kids sized as a little roof on it, a place where
they can go and do their own thing because they're largely
not going to be interested in what the grown-ups are doing,
and you're not going to want to have to mind them during that
time period. So I think it's a really good
chip in on that front. Let's see.
That actually feeds right into Matt blasquez question.
What's the best way to prepare bringing a one-year-old to the
tailgate? Look, here's the thing.
If you have a one-year-old you're golden because
everybody's going to want to hold the baby, Chris granite in
a pandemic. Maybe not the greatest of ideas
but everybody's going to at least pay attention to the baby.
The baby's going to be not mobile enough to go do things on
their own. Will they get bored probably
but, and they might get cranky, the probably want to take a nap,
all of that is fine, but I think again, giving kids feeding them
before you get there is important.
Having, you know, plentiful diapers available and having a
spot where you can change, what you've got the cars there that
should be fine. Fine.
And then look, I'm a firm believer in having a seating
area, having some chairs, having a canopy.
Let that be away from the cooking area and from the
internet, like the social mix area, where people can go and
rest and sit down and you know, hold the baby, let the baby nap
whatever. Like a lot of it is just
straight up zoning of your tailgate area.
So that you've got, like a quieter area, where people can
chill, you've got a more rugged, you know, rock, Area where
people are coming and going and where the food is being cooked.
And then frankly just letting the kid experience, everything
and see everything. Like it's great for small
children, both of my kids as youngsters were at tailgates.
I know yours have been as well. And, you know, we tend to think
that, you know, kids don't notice what's going on, but
especially at that age. They see everything they smell
everything. They they enjoy that
stimulation, even if they don't fully understand it.
And so, above all else, I think the best way to prepare bringing
a one roll to the to a tailgate, is to do it multiple times
because they'll start to get comfortable in that environment
and they'll start to figure out what they need to be doing.
And that's, that's a lot of, a lot of the battle I think is
just acclimating people acclimating babies to that
environment and making sure that the parents are acclimated as
well. So they're not nervous the whole
time. So I've been bringing my son
James, I brought him at eight months so he was born in January
in 2013. The August of 2013, he was going
to IU football games. He's been going significant oh
ever since and now we have a second son Grayson who B5.
He's been going since he was he was born in June, he went.
I think it like 4 months old, he went to one game.
Here's what I would say to Matt is again, you can't be
everything at all times. You can't be show up early
party, tailgate guy and stay for the whole game guy with kids, a
couple of things that We've lured, having done it for quite
a while. Is that a, as I mentioned
earlier, you know we get in 20 minutes before your viewing of
the game, kind of changes like for us when the band is on the
field is a big deal. So before the game and halftime
are times, that we are definitely in our seats because
our boys love the band, and I think it's our boys, like music,
but it's like the band is they play music.
As, you know, they March around their shiny, things like that.
Is sometimes more engaging for kids than a football game, but
there's a lot of going on. On when the band is there they
dig that. So you know don't skimp on
before the game don't be like oh half time.
We're going to go do something else.
Like you got to think of it you got to give the kids something
to that. They're enjoying looking at.
This might sound nutty but it's great for IU early on.
We would bring a booster seat from are car seat and we would
snap it. Snaps on to the the metal
bleachers perfectly. Keep my son from kind of moving
around because after about one or two years old, they start
wiggling. Everywhere.
And so we just put him. It's like a car seat.
We literally put him in the car seat on the stadium.
We now have, we pay for the seat backs as part of our ticket
package because for our younger with James, we used to do this,
we would bring in that, I had like a strap from a luggage
piece, I would just strap him to that because it would help him
kind of stay in his seat. Not move around too much.
We'd literally bring straps in. Make sure you have the clear
bag. I will say with a one-year-old,
you bring, you're gonna be able to get in with it whatever you
want in the stadium. Cause you feel like you have,
you know, feeding stuff and bottles and stuff, and they kind
of let you go with that, pretty good.
But yeah, the band and I would say to like we're trying our
first road game this year, with both of the boys were bringing
iPads. Like, I don't like it, but like,
when I took James, he was six years old to the Gator Bowl.
I had his phone or his little, like, my old phone just a, you
know, a little iPhone with no cell service was let him played
some games like, you know, lean on technology, but I would use
it in like, again, not at halftime.
He watches the Bandit like little points.
Maybe bring like a charging brick because they're going to
burn through technology and nothing is worse happened to me
at the gator boy. Forgot it.
It's like fourth quarter were down by two.
It's like a tight game and he's like, starting to get antsy want
to leave and it's like, no, I need you.
Focused on my daddy wants to watch the game.
So I would keep all those things in mind that think about, you
know and then again last thing I will say is just, you know, keep
in mind that the weather, you know, some of the games have
been cold and rainy and it's like, I want to do my best to
keep them dry. So bring some blankets you on
the hot sunny days. A blanket also helps just to
cover them from the Sun, but I would definitely look at ways to
kind of strapping them down isn't the right word, but
keeping them kind of locked in their seat, because them
wiggling and moving around is tough.
And so literally, again, a car seat or a booster seat.
You can put and strapped onto the, the seats at Memorial
Stadium. So keep that in mind.
But again, you can't do it. All you can't show up early, you
can't stay late with a one-year-old, you're just going
to have some you have to make some concessions.
To be okay with it but it's great for your kids, it's fun.
It's a great thing that you need to do it.
It should be a family thing. It really, it really is just
should not just be and this is the tough transition for people
in their 20s because I think to some degree, the the attitude
towards tailgating at IU has been, it's just a bunch of drunk
college kids, and it's not. And if you go to other places
across the country, that have a football culture, it's not a
bunch of yes. There are drunk college kids.
Trust me, I live in Bloomington. I live around drunk college kids
there. Fine, 95% of the time.
They're not a problem at all but don't let don't let your concern
about that if you are concerned about it.
Trent like keep you from bringing your family, the
tailgate, because it's a wonderful experience for
families to be at a that really is.
I mean, I it's one of the things we enjoy doing the most, a
couple of other really quick questions that I'm going to hit
before we finish up crit, our Chad boughs log, I think it is
asks, if going to a road game and ubering to a game, what is
the appropriate way to link up to a tailgate?
Pack a backpack of beer to share.
I want to have good tailgate manage with fellow Hoosiers but
won't have any food to bring to the table.
So I wouldn't bring a backpack because the the one and here's
the thing to keep in mind what are you going to do?
Are you going to go to the game afterwards?
If you are what's going to happen to the backpack?
A lot of people, one of my least favorite things and it's I'm not
mad at people for doing this and they just don't think it through
but they'll show up to the tailgate with their chairs.
And then they'll be like, hey can you hang on to my chairs?
And I'm like Sure because I can't take them in, they never
come get them after the game's over because they leave or they
ubered in or something like that.
And then it's like I have to do this dance with them during the
week following of giving them their stuff back or I don't give
them their stuff back because they never ask for it again.
Like I've probably my chair populations probably increased
by by half just because people never come and get their stuff
again. And so what I would suggest,
Chad is bring a 12-pack of you're going to bring beer.
Bring a 12 pack or a six pack in a cardboard container, like,
pick something specifically that travels.
Well, make sure it's cold and then bring it and put it in the
cooler. And look bringing bringing
something is going to be enough of a contribution.
Like I've never like, I say never I've rarely been to a
tailgate where the host came around and said, hey I need five
bucks for food, they probably should because I can tell you
like, I probably spend I don't know, seventy dollars sixty
seventy dollars just on the food on the main.
Course stuff for everybody but I just consider it like the cost
of doing business and being able to socialize with friends but
show some level of of gratitude towards that by providing
something. And so I think look beer is
always a good one, soft drink. Sometimes they're good one.
A lot of times I'm looking around like I don't really want
beer, I don't want, you know, a mixed drink.
I just want like a Coke or something to kind of clear my
head. A lot of times nobody brings
that but I would travel light and travel with something that
you can. At the tailgate and not need to
get back. And that's probably the best way
to go about things. Yeah, I agree.
Last thing that I'll Brooklyn cream.
And Crimson, actually, we already pretty much asked, or
answered this question, which was, what's the ideal dessert or
sweet item? For a tailgate.
We talked about some don'ts. So, like you can bake cookies.
Baked cookies, are always good. So you want to bake cookies.
That's a relatively low pressure thing to do avoid.
Like, always great brownies lights, are great.
Brownies are fantastic. Yes.
And even like doughnut holes, I think are generally a good
option because there again, easy.
To eat. They're not too much.
And so like I might look at a donut and be like I'm not not
eat a doughnut but I might grab five donut holes and then I've
eaten more than a doughnut, you know?
So like a lot of its just the psychology of the size of the
thing that you're bringing more than anything else.
And so that's what I would keep going to be treats.
Great, so Rice Krispie treats yes.
However the problem with rice krispie treats is most people
don't know how to make them. Well you can bring the
prepackaged ones certainly but my point is like Rice Krispie
treats. That's a hassle for you.
Because you're making them in a pan and then you have to cut
them up and take them out of the pan and put it in something else
and that that can be a bit much plus they don't travel well in
plastic bags. They tend to like bright like
breakup or meld together. It's a hot day, it's a problem.
So stick to the baked goods I think that are like that.
Are that have a like a shape that isn't going to get
completely distended. If something goes wrong with how
you brought it to the tailgate. That would be my thought process
there. But anyway, that was all the
questions you folks. If you've got other questions
throughout the course of the tailgate season, by all means
let us know. I will tell you all Idaho.
I've heard I think it's an 11 or 11:30 open to the lots and the
games at 7:30 that night. So that's going to be a long
tail gate. Maybe later on like next week or
the week after or maybe the week after the Iowa game.
We'll talk about some ideas for what do you do with a seven-hour
tailgate? How do you sustain that?
Because there are some tips and tricks I have up on that front
but we'll get to that next time. Anyway, that'll wrap it up for
us. Got any final thoughts before we
go now we've been an hour and 40.
We're good. We did we?
Okay, let's go. Let's do it live and then be
sure to stay tuned throughout the course of this week.
As we will have some more content.
We got Adam written Berg from ESPN coming on and joining Scott
on Monday. We're going to have some other
good football content and then we'll be live on the 30th on
Monday, August 30th at switchyard in Bloomington as we
talk about the Upcoming IU football season, plus a lot more
for Scott. I'm Gail, I'm here to that.
Don't bring a chair. I'm Galen.
This is Crimson, cast will catch you folks on the flipside.
Thanks for all the questions. See you in the green lot at some
point this year. So long, everybody.