I think it is important to point out that while every other school faces challenges with tailgating I think our set up with campus location and location of stadium on campus is fairly unique.
IMO The donor issue is the big one - we somehow have to get people that donāt tailgate to park in deck and then fill lots with people that usually tailgate filling each by priority points. Do that then work with PATs to come up with some no traditional solutions.
Given the money involved though it is hard to tell our biggest donors they canāt park in the spot they have been parking in the last decade.
I would imagine every campus puts highest paying donors closest to stadium (or the option to be). Would be surprised to find out otherwise and wouldnāt think that would/should change. No doubt we need the gold lot full though since that is what everyone seeās coming into stadium. But thatās still only a relatively small part of the overall tailgating scene scope. For what itās worth I do feel like Iāve seen improvements in tailgating atmosphere over the course of the last few seasons. Part of that is the group drawn by Normbulance crew and a few surrounding others but Iāve also seen some in green lot too. The student tailgate area is also a huge improvement. While we should keep looking for improvements, there have been some and as interest piques, I would expect this to be an organic work in progress. Enjoy the process and being part of the growth.
Yeah - our uniqueness is just that due to placement of stadium and location of campus we donāt have a lot of parking options or flexibility - especially near the stadium.
I do agree they have tried a few things. Flexibility with early arrivals and the student tailgate are two of them!
No, I donāt think most of us care whether or not we are super close to the stadium. We just need to have most of the tailgaters congregated closer together, even if it is a little ways to the stadium. To do that, we need to use the green spaces that we have and are currently not being utilized.
I think this subject is worthy of the AD creating some sort of tailgating committee and having a few open forums. This is just too important to just copy and paste what ODU did and then stick with it for 10 years.
FWIW it only took us about 10 years to get dedicated tailgating space for baseball. Weāve officially had it for the last 2 seasons and the culture is slowly growing. Now it is included in the 49er Club giving benefits (which is another story).
I second this notion. I love that we built the 49th acre, understand that space is built for the undergrads, its a great first step in building our tailgate culture. Now time to figure out the Alumni and famlies. Iāve seen many different schools do it many different ways and get creative with the space they have. Either way, a dilberate approach through a committee could be of great benefit
I donāt understand how PATs can have this much controlā¦ I too had a few tickets when I was a student 20 years ago and it was a pain but just wrote it off to they wanted the revenueā¦ This was before football though and it seems now they are actually making the school lose revenue by giving people tickets and giving fans a reason not to come back.
Lots of valid points here and I agree there needs to be a committee and more work done to think about future tailgate plans. However, like a lot of things, WINNING solves a lot of this.
I have been underwhelmed at the tailgating in CRI 3 so I moved to CRI 2 (also to get away from the new student area) and it is certainly an upgrade BUT there are parking spots I have never seen used and for every car that sets up a tailgate, there are 3-4 that pull in and walk elsewhere.
Some could be meeting friends but I wonder how many go to the Alumni Pavilion for that tailgate? We did that when out kid was younger because it was easier for just 3 people but this year went all in on tailgating and I just wish more neighbors were there and set up to have fun.
The firsts couple of games had the Biff-hype and Homecoming was amazing (lots of alumni tailgates all over the place) so we just need to win more games and draw those types of crowds regularly and the environment will get better.
With that said, I hope the AD is reading this and puts together a panel. They need to be proactive and transparent as we plan to expand so that we can be innovative and improve the environment all around.