Football game brings out clashing tailgating styles
Tailgating minimalists and cultivated parking-lot revelers who make an art form of cooking, eating and drinking waged a battle of style Saturday before the showdown between Kansas University and University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
In a sea of pregame tailgaters outside Memorial Stadium, the division was illustrated by the Russell-Howarter contingent and the Stover-Hill gang.
Die-hard Jayhawk booster John Stover, Lawrence, pulled enough outdoor hardware from his vehicle to qualify as a restaurant on wheels. He added to his armory a week earlier by winning a portable grill and cooler gizmo. It was awarded to the KU fan hosting the best tailgating fiesta on the hill.
“We knew about the contest,” he said. “But we had no idea we got a real prize.”
The new equipment fit well with a menu of shrimp, salmon, brisket, fried chicken, pasta and potato salads, relish and cheese plates, breads and desserts and beverages of all sorts.
In the shade of the stadium’s east bleachers, Stover dined with Justin Hill and Kathy Stover using Jayhawk forks on Jayhawk tables under a Jayhawk tent adorned with Jayhawk flags. They wore Jayhawk hats and Jayhawk shirts. Next to the television, a Jayhawk football helmet converted to condiment server shared table space with wooden Jayhawk knickknacks. Their bottle opener played the KU fight song when in use.
Stover’s exclamation point was a vehicle license plate that read “ROCHALK.”
David Howarter, a Washburn University graduate living in Topeka, confessed that his spread was Spartan by comparison.
“We’re not in the big time,” said Howarter, who was tailgating with Skip and Angie Russell and Melissa Ruggero, also of Topeka, in the stadium’s east parking lot.
Tailgaters Nathan Herries, 5, Lawrence, and Monica McAferty, 3, watch Monica's dad, Steve McAferty, McLouth, grill some burgers and hotdogs outside Memorial Stadium. Football fans tailgated Saturday before Kansas University played University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Howarter and Skip Russell, who inexplicably wore an Oklahoma Sooners cap to the game, cooked bratwurst on a grill small enough to carry with one arm.
“They both ate six! That’s 150 grams of fat,” said Angie Russell, who opted for chicken.
Instead of a tent, the foursome sipped light beer in a slice of shade provided by their SUV. Rather than pregame shows on television, they settled for people-watching.
Ruggero, a Washburn law student, argued that her group’s low-key approach should go unpunished. At Washburn, she said, nobody gets excited enough about Ichabod football games to engage in such merrymaking.
“No tailgating,” said Ruggero, shrugging her shoulders. “I was a cheerleader. I had to go.”
Perhaps a multiyear sentence of hard-core tailgating at Jayhawk games is what they need to straighten out.
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