You may have seen this yesterday over at Blutarsky's blog. According to the Tuscaloosa News, Alabama will start charging for premium tailgate spaces on The Quad, their version of our North Campus or Ole Miss' The Grove.
The plan doesn't encompass the entire Quad, but it does involve 155 tailgate spots that are being sold for $729 each. Each spot "comes with a tent, electricity and a parking spot near the engineering buildings."
I'm with Blutarsky on this one in that I saw it coming. When the new "family friendly" tailgate rules were announced -- particularly those involving large "corporate" tailgates, I thought the auctioning off of tailgate spots on North Campus was inevitable. I'm only shocked that Bama beat UGA to the punch. As yet, no plans in this area have been announced from our guys.
In Bama's Defense:
Alabama officials estimated in other articles that approximately 35,000 fans attended the Georgia and LSU games without tickets last year. They simply showed up, tailgated and partied all day.
With modern tailgate enhancements such as portable generators, "bag" furniture, satellite TVs, and light weight tents, tailgating continues to explode in the SEC. Anyone who saw the chaos surrounding The Quad last year for our match-up could see that more structure was needed there.
Their Pricing:
For groups who tailgate with 4-8 people, $729 for a tent, roughly 10x10 worth of reserved premium tailgate space for the season, power, and a premium parking spot isn't that bad of a deal. If they were to throw in cable access, it would be a sweet setup.
It would never work for my group as we need 6-7 times as much space for our configuration, and that price per square foot would cost us $6000 or so. But I digress.
My Beef with These Types of Plans:
My real issue with selling tailgate spots isn't the cost. It's the continual fleecing of the fan base. Much of the affection I feel for The University of Georgia is wrapped up in the entire game day experience. It's not just what happens on Saturday Between the Hedges. It's the complete experience, and that starts with the way we tailgate.
I don't mind more tailgate structure, and I recognize that clean-up and policing of an expanded tailgate experience costs money. But isn't the simple answer to fine or punish people who abuse the rules, generate outrageous amounts of litter (this is bad fan issue #1 that pisses me off), set-up too early or behave boorishly rather than price loyal givers out of the market?
If they would enforce existing rules, some of the problems surrounding tailgating would fix themselves.
PWD
12 comments:
The problems outlined by BamaGrad regarding early set up could easily have been fixed by instituting a 7 am rule similar to what we have at UGA.
UGA also suffers from people treating the campus like a garbage dump on gameday. I am all for personal responsibility, but the University is partially negligent. It is quite obvious to anyone who tailgates that UGA only provides about 1/2 the number of trash receptacles needed. We bring bags to help combat the problem, but until the university doubles the number of garbage containers campus will be consistently trashed.
Tennessee does it right as far as trash goes. Everytime i have been there about every 30 minutes to an hour they have someone come into the parking lot in a golf cart with a new trash bag and puts a new one in and takes the old one out. I really dont see why we couldnt do the same.
Take a stroll through North Campus in front of the main library on a gameday.
The overall majority of idiots that tailgate there litterally throw their trash where they're standing at the time. Last year the univesity sent around guys from the facilities department handing out trash bags. The idiots even threw those on the ground.
One could argue that charging to tailgate could create a sense of entitlement -- as in I paid for this place now clean it up for me!
Our tailgate is on North Campus and in initially reading Bama's plan it appealed to me because waking up at 6:15am to get my spot on North Campus is not the greatest thing to do after a late night on Friday. However, the more I look at it the more it stinks.
10x10 wouldn't even come close to accommodating our group. While the power provides good value, the are would just be to small. By the time you set everything up with table, chairs, food, tv, etc, you arent left with much more room for bodies.
I agree with the previous poster in that the 7am gameday rule that UGA employs relieves a lot of the problems that Bama seemed to be having. I've been getting up there early for a couple of years now and I've never had a problem getting a good space. Hell, most of the time you could still show up by 9am and get a decent spot, albeit a little closer to downtown.
As far as the garbage situation goes, I think you guys are hitting the nail on the head. It's ridiculous that when I set up our tailgate near the Arch that we have to go and drag trash receptacles across North Campus and/or bring our own bags to make sure we leave a relatively clean space.
I don't think it's silly at all that you might have to bring your own trash bag! What an awful situation! Poor you!
How about the university put out more of those stupid trash cans in north campus. It doesnt take a rocket scientist to figure out thats where most people tailgate and we need a lot of trash cans thee. And they can stop putting the trash cans in the family friendly area because no one tailgates there.
Its the slobs that are ruining it for everyone. They continually litter the campus on gameday, and are too fat/lazy to clean up after themselves. If we would actually punish them (start with fines, followed by taking away their tickets), things would get a lot better quick. Oh, and I agree with the 7am setup time---that is all Bama had to do, which is to enforce it, but it seems they purposely let it get bad so it would give them an excuse to start charging for spaces.
I tailgate on north campus for every home game, and it has gotten much worse in recent years. Almost as bad as the people who trash the place are the ones who block off a huge amount of space for their tailgates. They purposely spread everything out as much as possible, and take up way more room than they need.
this is actually a classic economics situation. Where you have a commodity that is limited but desireable, and free, some people will take only what they really need, some people will grab all they can, and a lot of people will use whatever they take in a wasteful manner.
It wouldnt take a bean counter with the soul of a cash register like Mike Adams to figure out that he can turn tailgating into a "profit center" by simply charging people for access to the campus....just like he's done for parking. And, an ancillary benefit that will give cover to his main concern is this: by licensing tailgate spots, it may well help with the trash problem, especially on north campus.
I hate to sound like someone's crochety old grandfather, but it doesnt seem that hard a concept to bring enough bags to dispose of your own trash. UGA could do a better job of collecting the full bags, or providing places to deposit them, but the biggest problem is too many people using the north campus quads are just slobs.
and dont give me the "it's the can scavengers who toss everything around." Sure, some of that happens, but most home games, you stroll through north campus after a game and it's a disgrace.
Sunday morning before church everything is cleaned up and campus looks like it did Firday evening.
If they charge too much where the average fan/idiot can't tailgate on North Campus, the idiots who litter there will just litter somewhere else. So charging an arm and a leg and ruining a good atmosphere will not prevent littering.
Have the idiot cops that are standing at intersections looking for open containers police the north area for littering and scavangers. Probably less money in that for law enforcement though, so that will never happen.
Personally I think a drunken knucklehead walking out into a street in front of a car is a little more important than litter on campus, and the real idiot is the one that thinks otherwise. If you complain about cops looking for drunks in the street, I could just imagine your outrage at cops walking through campus handing out tickets for littering and telling people to clean up their little spot on campus. I am all for enforcing the rules, as PWD said, but I can tell you that most people are not going to want cops or staff walking by telling them that they have violated some rule or that they need to clean up their area. Either way, someone is going to be unhappy.
I would think that the best solution would be to sell a permit for tailgating on campus at a minimal cost, about $20.00 per game or $100.00 year, with no set or reserved locations. You can use as much space as you want and first come first served, just like it is now. Use the money from the permits to hire staff or students to go around and pickup thrash during or after the game. They do it now but the school has to pay for it. This would remove the burden of paying for the cleanup from the school and the only time you see the cops would be while they are looking for your “posted” permit and kicking your tail out if you don’t have one.
I agree with you, except when it comes to people who "set up too early." You can never set up too early for a tailgate!
Post a Comment