fire bucky gleason, tailgating

Now, you're probably thinking "Dude, you can't possibly hate tailgating, right? Tailgating is one of the best inventions ever, second only to perhaps high-definition television." I know, I just blew your mind with my psychic abilities. Deal with it. My issue with this piece by Vincent Price Frank Deford is that it's just lazy. Making him our Bucky Gleason of the Day.

Now, I understand that hokey wordplay is supposedly part of Frank Deford's charm. This is meant to be a sort of nostalgia, with flowery language and a touch of "you know." For that reason, I withheld the plaschke-nanigans tag as much as possible (but not entirely). What annoys me is this just seems like "Hey, Frank, we need 400 words or so on something. Pick whatever you want, don't talk to anybody or do any research or anything. We'll take care of the rest by posting a picture of a guy with a cooler."

In the end, I think Frank Deford somehow fancies himself as taking over for David Halberstam in writing amazing prose about anything and everything (including, often, sports). However, Deford misses way more often than he hits. Perhaps a byproduct of working with Bryant Gumbel on a sensationalist HBO program. I don't know. I do know I don't like what he wrote here, even if I love what he decided to write about.

I can't remember the last picnic I went on. I mean one of those classic old-fashioned picnics where you take a blanket and a hamper,

Hamper? You bring your laundry on a picnic with you?

a cooler, maybe, or a thermos, and drive out to the countryside and sit down peacefully in a lovely field of wild flowers, alone with nature, and ... have a picnic.

Explain the ellipsis, sir. Now.

Really, does anybody do that anymore?

Probably, unless you have to be out in the countryside among wild flowers. I go on a picnic annually, though I leave the laundry at home and it's not in a field of wild flowers.

But, of course, what Americans do now is tailgate, that grand old football tradition.

What? Tailgating? I thought we were talking about picnics? What the hell happened? Where was your transition? This is like a conversation with my father, where he'll randomly stop one line of thought and start another without, you know, telling you.

Jammed together, on asphalt, 'midst exhaust fumes and exhausting vulgarities.

Plaschke-nanigans. Again, I'm prepared for wordplay. But if you do it poorly, you're tagged.

Tailgating seems pretty much an American institution confined pretty much, in sports, to football.

"because I don't feel like talking to any other sports fans or thinking hard, really."

Even on soft Summer days, most baseball fans, arriving at the park early, will eschew the charms of the parking lot and rush inside to watch batting practice.

Don't know about that, dude. There was some pretty solid tailgating going on in Philly this past July. Also, why is summer capitalized?

But even late in the season, football fans will tailgate, foregathering on the cold, hard tarmac for hours, dining al fresco Americano, when it's cold and raw and very un-picnicy.

At least he connected it to his picnic hook. Despite the fact that any fourth grader can tell you if you're going to conjugate or change "picnic" you add a "k" ("picnicked"). So that should be "un-picnicky." More importantly, though-

ATTENTION ALL TAILGATERS ON THE TARMAC: PLEASE WATCH FOR ARRIVING AND DEPARTING AIRCRAFT

There is nothing selective about tailgaiting. It crosses all ethnic, racial and religious lines. You just have to like football, and, likewise, alcoholic beverages. You don't even have to have a vehicle with a tailgate in order to tailgate.

I suppose the reason tailgating originated with football is because football games only come once a week and are events.

True.

In fact, traditionally -- especially at college games -- we refer to football "weekends," not merely football games.

What? When? Where? Who?

They don't sell corsages at hockey games, do they?

I've never seen them sold at football games. What are you talking about? I know some southern football college games try to high-end their tailgating, but that doesn't change the fact that most tailgaters are folks drinking beer and trying to keep warm.

There was once an episode on The Simpsons, the essence of which was that tailgating was more important than the game. This is not, I do not believe, an opinion held only by Homer Simpson.

Depending on the game, tailgating can be more important. Just ask Lion, Raider, and Bills fans.

And while tailgating has never fully migrated to other sports,

Now, I just said they did it before two Phillies games. And I've done it before Sabres games (noting that we were certainly not alone there either). I think what it boils down to more than anything is time. When the puck drops, or the first pitch is thrown, at 7, fans don't really have much time to leave work, change, get to the venue, and have enough time to fire up the grill and throw back a few cold ones. This applies to football, too. At Monday Night Football, the tailgating was still going on, but only a small fraction of what it usually is. In this way football is brilliant: fans have all week to get amped up about games, and budget their entire day to be at the stadium. With a game at 1, there's no shame in getting breakfast in the parking lot at 9, lunch at 11, and being drunk all the while. Football lends itself best to tailgating. But stop saying nobody else does it, because it makes you look stupid and lazy.

there is one other entertainment where it has caught on: rock concerts.

I've already shown that SI.com's editorial staff got a bit lax here, but this needs some editing:
there is one other entertainment where it has caught on: rock concerts.

As someone who's attended many a country music show, tailgating is not somehow limited to rock.

We used to think that the most popular item consumed by concert-goers was weed, and while that sort of thing has hardly gone out now, I am assured by my crack concert spies that nowadays the primary smell wafting around parking lots before concerts is more likely just to be that of good old all-American football-style hamburgers on the grill.

Depends on the concert. And while I know "crack" here is not meant in a drug related sense, you confuse your audience by throwing it in there so close to "weed."

Concert tailgating appears to be limited, however. It is more likely to be the case where aging entertainers, like Bruce Springsteen or U2, are performing. They attract a more mature, boomer audience. Teenyboppers don't tailgate.

Again, no research. Teenyboppers, infants, newborns, those still in utero, everybody tailgates at football games. I've heard "exhausting vulgarities" streaming out of the mouths of babes in the Ralph Wilson Stadium lots more than I'd care to admit.

Tailgating is a sign of growing up.

No it isn't. Tailgating is a sign of getting tickets. Or a sign of knowing somebody who got tickets. Or a sign of just feeling like heading down to the stadium to hang out before the game.

People tailgate before the Santa Fe Opera. Honestly.

Wait, what? Doesn't this blow your entire premise to hell? I thought tailgating was a purely gridiron affair that nobody else does ever because of "football weekends" with corsages and all-American hamburgers? And now the snobs just outside the opera are tailgating? I mean, good for them. I'm sure it's fun ("Let's go woodwinds, let's go!"), but if they're tailgating at the opera, they're tailgating just about anywhere else.

Now that I think of it, I wasted a perfectly good opportunity by not tailgating before my son's baptism ("Hey, Father, think fast!"). Next time.

And, of course, another reason why tailgating has superceded picnics is because at least there ain't no ants in stadium parking lots.

Superseded. There may not be any ants in the field of wildflowers either. You know what is in the stadium parking lots in lieu of ants? Actually, I'd rather not think of it.

So, in sum: tailgating is for football, except for when it isn't. It's also very American. And awesome. That's right, I just wrote Deford's column in eighteen words. Better, too.