I read hundreds of blog comments, editorials, articles and message board posts about the new tailgate rules over the past several weeks. Here's my only remaining question.
There were 70 tons of garbage left on North Campus after a single game last year. In reading all of those articles and comments, how is it possible that there wasn't a single post anywhere from a person saying, "You know what. I wish I had picked up my trash."
How can a group of fans make such a mess and that results in so much that they find important and fun being taken from them and not have a single one express any regret over their own actions or accept any responsibility for the outcome? That just blows me away. But I guess that explains the problem.
PWD
Georgia Sports Blog FanShop
- Georgia Bulldogs Women's Sideline Clutch
- Price: $84.99
45 comments:
That's the typical young mentality these days Paul. They want everything done for them and given to them. Its never their fault....
Didnt 70 tons of trash include all of the trash including what was in the trash receptacles and from the stadium? If so, that number is misleading.
1 ton, or seventy tons, the point is the same.
Anyone who walked by North Campus knows that there were many many people who got drunk and left trash everywhere for someone else to clean up. The excuses of there need to be more trash cans or thats why thy hire a cleaning crew are only a mask for I feel entitled and I'm too lazy to act semi-responsible.
RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE
Anon @ 7:12 is right, but PWD's point is 100% valid ... Here's a quote from the Aux Svc Coord after the SC game last year ..
"What happened last week is typical," said George Stafford, UGA's associate vice president for auxiliary and administrative services. "It takes 200 to 300 people on Sunday morning to pick up and bag up all the trash, throw it on a truck and haul it out to the landfill. A typical day game produces 35 to 40 tons of trash. A night SEC game like this we have 70or more tons."
He's talking about campus wide -- not just North Campus
The amount of trash cans set up around North Campus and bathroom facilities is highly inadequate given the capacity. Not trying to take away the fact that everyone should have brought their own trashbags and picked up, but the oneous is on the University IMO.
per the AJC.
"about 70 tons of garbage and left mounds of tents, grills, coolers and chairs across the beloved North Campus. Some even urinated on public buildings and defecated outside."
Just for you spoiled kids..that's 140,000lbs of garbage.
You are exactly right. For a long time, the North Campus tailgaters have viewed the trash issue as an "other person's" problem. The excuses have been many:
1. Those damn youngsters
2. Those old alumni
3. Those people who did not go to UGA and come to Athens just to party
4. Michael Adams
5. The homeless
I have had season tickets for nearly twenty years. I used to love tailgating before games. For a long time we tailgated over on Hull Street until someone decided North Campus would be better. After some REALLY bad tailgating scenes during the 2004,2005, 2006 seasons (too many drunks, too many drugs, shady behavior) I decided it was not all that fun anymore. Too many of the people I was with were part of the problem.
Maybe I am getting old, but tailgating is too much of show. In some ways the show is more important to them than the event. Now I go to every home game and hang out in the city of Athens before the game.
There is a great restaurant scene. Most of the bars and restaurants have college football on tv, the food is pretty good and compared to a night out in the ATL - it is relatively inexpensive.
Does it matter if its 70, or 50, or 20 for that matter? The exact tonnage of trash left on north campus isn't exactly the issue here.
It's called a lack of accountability and it's a cancer in this country. That, along with political correctness, are absolutely malignant.
Don't waste your breath arguing with spoiled twits. We have bigger problems to address in Washington.
Typical, and sad. I never understood the need to generate such trash at a football tailgate...haul out what you haul in...and we would have never had a problem.
The puritans need to wake up & realize that alcohol is being served in almost every tailgate. Anytime you combine booze with enthusiasm - you should expect a select percentage of those people to indulge too heavily. And as a result, you should expect for the grounds to be trashed. Face the facts.
The Kentucky Derby is hailed as the classiest sporting event in the country. But have you ever seen the infield of Churchill Downs on Sunday morning?? It's a mess and it's ok becuase the money generated by the event far outweighs the cost of a cleaning service.
The booze may create the problem. But the bigger problem is the excitement of the game. I'll take some excessive trashing over a boring Saturday afternoon every day of the week.
The trash isn't important to most people. And just because you think that it's important doesn't mean that it is important.
Well, duh, Paul, clearly your stupefaction stems from the fact that you still don't understand this was all your fault in the first place. If you and the rest of the bloggers had just kept your traps shut about it, Adams would never have done anything and we could all continue to befoul North Campus in peace.
I don't tailgait up there for just that reason. Over by the practise fields is much nicer and we generally clean up after ourselves. A consequence of avoiding the frats I suppose.
You're right, anon 7:26. We shouldn't be upset because it was actually only 1 ton of trash left on North Campus. You have completely destroyed PWD's point.
Anon 10:21,
My group polishes off several thousands of dollars a year in food and booze, and we leave our area spotless. And I'd lay odds of 10 to 1 that our tailgate is bigger in terms of the # of people than yours.
Being drunk has nothing to do with being a lazy slob.
And, I would know...I'm usually drunk on gameday...I have references to prove that. lol.
PWD
For the most part, this will do nothing to change tailgating behavior. It's not like less people are going to show up to games and it's not like UGA will play fewer late/night games due to the SEC TV deal. All that will happen is the garbage will now show up somewhere else.
If you visit most other SEC schools on gameday, they WELCOME tailgating and plan for it with proper simple amenities. LSU, Ole Miss, even South Carolina and Kentucky all come to mind.
We can go round and round on this, but tailgating is here to stay whether Michael Adams and co. wish to plan for it or not.
Why don't we all just move the festivities to South Campus? Just the sight of the Chemistry Department always made me want to drink....ha.
I guess one could be just as amazed that you continue to let Adams off the hook for handling the situation the way he did.
Note: This is also the way he will continue to handle the situation until almost all tailgating on campus is banned.
And no, my group does not leave trash lying around.
I guess Georgia fans are animals...unlike the fan bases of LSU and Ole Miss, where tailgate restrictions basically don't exist.
Having tailgated on North Campus for 10 years as a student and now Alumni the scene everyone saw in the paper isn't new to me. I also won't apologize for trash that I didn't contribute to. We clean up every week. Period. But, I think people are missing the issue. It's not a trash thing, it's a public image/Mike Adam's power issue. Explain how banning kegs reduces trash? What do tents have to do with trash? People don't leave expensive smokers on North Campus so why ban grilles? It's all about UGA looking like a party school and Adam's has proved he will do whatever he can to change that. With that said I feel that banning tailgating on NC is extremley severe and there are many other changes that could have been made and still allow us to have a chance to enjoy NC tailgating as we always have. And yes, people having accountability for their trash is one of those changes.
I think as everyone knows the number of tailgaters on North Campus is at least 5 to 6 times bigger than it was even a few years ago but there definitely wasn’t 5 to 6 times as much effort put into keeping the place clean during tailgating. The University did do something but it wasn’t close the amount of effort needed to make a dent with that many people. That left the responsibility with the tailgaters and we failed miserably. If it’s really “our” campus then we should have treated it as such. Just picking up after yourself may make you feel like you can point the blame, but if you didn’t pick up someone else’s trash on our campus then it’s still our fault. It’s a group responsibility so just taking individual responsibility isn’t enough. Other people absolutely added to this trash more than the people on the blog but it still doesn’t leave us blameless. I just wish I would have realized this earlier.
I’m actually more ok with the restrictions that I thought I would be. There just shouldn’t be that many people on North Campus for tailgating. It shouldn’t be like Marti Gras because that just destroys the area to much.
Now the no pull behind grills is a BS rule. How else am I going to cook a whole pig for the Arkansas games?
I guess I should apologize - I am sure that I have left an empty beer can/bottle on North Campus while tailgating. Though I am absolved of recent problems since I have not tailgated on North Campus since 2007.
The problem on North Campus when I was there was lack of preparation by everyone. We often did not have sufficient trash bags of our own and the university did not provide sufficient trash receptacles.
However, vandals, homeless, etc. contributed to the problem. Many times we returned to North Campus to find that during the game tailgates had been raided and chairs, tables, etc. had been stolen. The place looked completely different than when we left for the stadium 45 minutes before kickoff.
There are three problems:
(1) Lack of Security on North Campus during games
(2) Lack of planning by the university for trash pickup - checkout what they do at the Grove.
(3) Lack of initiative by tailgaters to pick up the university's slack in providing security and trash receptacles.
The tailgating atmosphere on North Campus changed immediately when the family friendly zones arrived. The closing of frats near River Rd. surely had an impact too.
Adams made it worse but did nothing to help. Adams set up north campus tailgaters for failure. Adams is now pushing a new set of rules that still does not ban styrofoam coolers. Adams either wants to completely ban north campus tailgating or sell spots.
Our tailgaters are no worse than those anywhere else. We were just set up for failure on North Campus by a President with an agenda.
Anon 9:45 AM,
Agreed, especially with the last paragraph. Downtown Athens makes for a nice tailgate without any of the hassle of setup/breakdown. I get the feeling we're gonna have a lot more company this year with these rule changes...
Anon 12:44,
LSU is struggling with trash problems right now, too. But there problems....despite being knuckle dragging whack jobs...aren't as bad as ours.
If you're a bigger slob than an LSU fan, you're hopeless.
As for Ole Miss, the Ole Miss fans treat The Grove with more respect than UGA fans treat North Campus.
Our fans said they wanted The Grove but they treated it like a NASCAR infield.
The Grove doesn't allow:
-- Grills or open flames
-- Smokers
-- Boilers/Fryers
-- Generators of any kind
-- "Mass consumption vehicles including Kegs, Funnels or shots."
-- Drinking games
That's the rules at Ole Miss.
Evidence:
http://www.olemiss.edu/gameday/tailgating.htm
Lawyered
With all due respect to everyone's opinions, what do boilers/fryers, grills and smokers have to do with breaking littering laws?
Having a generator means you're going to trash the place?
How 'bout hire some security at the place at issue and clean it up directly?
Attack the problem head-on....don't fart around with this other crap.
TommyP
TommyP,
The issue with Grills and Fryers is safety. Its not a great idea to pack as many people as you'll find on North Campus into a small space with very drunk people AND fire or boiling oil. That's not smart.
The fryer problem was one that we saw up close and personal near our tailgate spot on South Campus. There were some really idiotic people on campus who didn't know how to use them.
They would set them up on the pavement with no cardboard boxes underneath resulting in permanent grease stains to the white concrete in high traffic / high visibility places.
They would also set up the fryers in areas of high traffic and then throw footballs around them...with children at play. When you've got 5+ gallons of oil burning at 400 degrees or so, you shouldn't have anyone running or playing near that.
It's one thing to burn yourself. It's another to burn someone else.
That was a reasonable thing to ban. The grills...if you want to grill, there's plenty of areas beyond North Campus to do it.
They basically wrote a rule that defacto makes people who used to tailgate on North Campus not want to do it anymore. That was their intent.
Neither here nor there but...they make oil-less turkey fryers now which are OUTRAGEOUSLY awesome.
PWD
TommyP - update
I'm talking about North Campus grills. Not pull behind grills in less populated areas.
Paul,
It is no use. Some of these knuckleheads SIMPLY DO NOT GET IT. Why in the hell should the University put special security out to watch folks tailgating stuff? Dumber than dirt and a waste of taxpayer money. Watch your own stuff. Rotate folks out and pull fire guard like we did in the Army. Pick up your damn trash and stop blaming lack of trash bags and containers provided by the University.
I am amazed at the pathetic blaming of others for their/our own laziness and senseless sense of some sort of entitlement.
I can count the times I have supported Mike Adams on one finger. But this time he is right and the only problem is that he might not have gone far enough.
I guess one could be just as amazed that you continue to let Adams off the hook for handling the situation the way he did.
Anon @ 12:38, have you ever read this blog before? This URL devotes more hate to that sonofabitch than the rest of the interwebs combined.
If you know you've got a hamfisted tyrant for a president, why in the world would you send him an engraved invitation to overreach and consolidate power?
The other rationale behind the grill ban is that people were dumping their charcoal on (what was left of) the North Campus lawn. Sloppy, slovenly people. The ban on generators (I'm guessing) was also designed to protect the lawns; if you don't bring a heavy generator, you're also not going to bring that (heavy) 50-inch TV, Laz-Y-boy recliner, satellite dish, etc...
19 year North Campus tailgater with nothing to apologize for (who was planning on moving in 2010 due to the drunks,trash, and scene. Now we will be competing with all of the displaced) You actually expect someone with no more respect for people or property to apologize. They just don't realize they were the problem--always someone else was. I agree that individuals should be held resonsible for their actions and am disgusted by the situation. I also know that a police presence--arresting those who are overserved and using the restroom everywhere--would help. There has been virtually no University or police presence there. If you have not tailgated on North Campus, it is easy to offer opinions about who is the problem and generalize about it. Tailgaters should be held accountable but just as you propose personal responsiblity do not let the University off the hook. If they had put the same police force in place that it will take to enforce the rules and used them to maintain order, we would not have to result to such rules. Incidentally, I predict the problem will not be solved--some will simply relocate--mostly people who behaved and had larger tailgates set up. The "transient" tailgater will still show up, still overindulge, and still make a mess. Watch and see!
Paul: That makes perfectly good sense after you explained it further.
Honestly, I've never tailgated there and had no idea what it was like.
You're absolutely right. You wanna grill, go to another spot.
Thanks for the clarification....and LOVE the blog, buddy. Read it everyday while living among the enemy (Knoxville).
TommyP
I'm just curious how they stop people from playing drinking games at Ole Miss.(?)
This is nothing more than Michael Adams furthering his master plan of finally pissing off all living alumni.
He's a worthless bastard and its too bad this blog, which I highly respect, has drank his kool aid.
Reading through these comments makes it seem like it's all the students fault. Being a student myself, I am a little disheartened at the fact that we are being blamed for evey problem due to tailgating problms. There have been tailgates on north campus for many years and now suddenly it's a issue? Out fraternity has a tailate every week on nc an it is cleaned up appropriately with nothing left. You can blame us all you want but it won't fix anything. Just stop crying move your tailgate somewhere else and stop complaining about something you have no control over. Also, there are way less than 20,000 students that are allocated tickets pet game in a 92,746 seat stadium so much more alumni/random fans are at each game than are the drunk/lazy/obnoxious students you all bash. Just to remind you, you were once a student at uga and despite what you say, people partied, got drunk, and did stupid things when they were in college. Get off your high horse and just go with it. You can't change it, so just have fun somewhere else with your friends and families and stop blaming Michael Adams for all your woes. If it's such a big deal, go be an Alabama or lsu fan.
I wasn't even there and I wish I would have picked up a little. Being trashy is only acceptable if you're an LSU fan.
Because everyone has this, "They will pick up my trash" philosophy....and many won't say that but we all see that that is what they mean.
It's pathetic and anyone who goes to games sees MANY doing just that
You know what, GOOD FOR ADAMS.
If our lazy ass fan base wont pick up their trash, you won't tailgate.
I go to North Campus for my tailgating and am APPAULDED at the tailgating trash left after every game.
You know the funny thing I come to is....the University should have just said screw it, we won't pick up your trash either. The next weekend when the tailgaters, whether students, alumni, yokels, goats, whatever, return they will find a destroyed field filled with litter and be disgusted....and maybe finally start cleaning up their own damn selves.
(I know this will never happen, because our society has become a society of "Someone else will do it, buy it, pay for it, for me.")
Diatribe over.
Censorship at its finest on this blog..
No kidding Joe, I'm surprised your comment wasn't censored.
So Ole Miss has banned tents and said tailgating starts 4 hours before kickoff?
Look guys, this is so typical today's world behavior. S--- is always someone else's fault. I saw campus that day and as a Georgia Grad, I was sick. I have stopped attending home games as much because the rude, just down-right trashy behavior makes me sick. My daughter is a sophomore this year and we have made it clear that if we ever catch her drunk and stumbling down the street with drunk males in tow her tail will be back home so fast her head will spin.Yes, I am a season tix holder and yes, as a senior in 1980, I drank a few beers that year, but i have never disgraced myself like I have seen folks do in recent years. I have seen it all from racial slurs to naked people peeing on my beloved UGA buildings. The racial slurs were the worst. Here we are watching mostly young Black men play on our team and some spoiled numnuts uses the N word. Folks, I can only pray I have raised my son and daughter better.
80Dawg...or should I say 96Gator?...
that was lame.
Post a Comment