“If you had to pick one thing to describe Morningside College’s culture what we it be?” I asked multiple people this question, and got a similar answer out of the people I asked.

Tony Patton was the one of the first ones to fire a response to this question with such excitement. He exclaimed “Football, of course.” This answer seemed to be similar among a lot of students I asked. “Sports” was even a reoccurring answer throughout campus.

Football, it is an exciting sport that has lots of big hits and big plays which leads to some exciting games and moments through the year. But diving into the question even more, what draws most students into the football games. And the answer isn’t the game as much as you they lead on with their responses.

It’s the culture outside of the game. Before, after, and even during. The social aspect of hanging outside in the cold or heat to grill food and drink alcoholic beverages is an attraction within itself, and you get to follow that up with a football game of screaming and for most college students, more alcoholic beverages. Which could almost be a culture of college within itself as well, but that is a discussion for another time.

So what is the attraction to waking up early to be inebriated from alcohol. The music and people always help. Tailgating and getting ready for a football game is something special most describe. Planning out everything the night before, between a grill, the food, the drinks, the music, and the game is something that is thought out very deeply. Nothing can be forgotten.

So I decided to see what the big deal was about tailgating. As a sports broadcaster, I look forward to the actual game, this week I was setting my alarm early to early enough to experience tailgating first hand at the Morningside for the football game against Dordt College on Saturday, November 3rd.

While walking around the parking lot of Elwood-Olsen Stadium, I realized two things about the tailgaters, these people are die hard fans and they are extremely nice. They kept offering food after food as I made my rounds throughout.

I made my way throughout many tents and asked people questions. Most did not want their names revealed in the papers and some even refused to tell them, even though they were wearing customized Morningside jersey’s with their son’s names on the back.

Another quick realization I made while walking group to group was that they are mostly families. Most groups consisted of families and maybe families friends in some cases, but not as many students and alumni as you would expect. Looking at people that go tailgate at division one colleges, it seems to be all drunk students and alumni.

At Morningside, it is not drunk students and alumni, it is purely adults have alcoholic beverages at a respectable pace to not get drunk, but to have fun with the people they are with. Most offered me beers as well, so you could tell none of their jobs were police officers, because they never asked for my I.D.

“We go everywhere,” said one mother. “If it’s an away game and we don’t think we can make it in time to get there over three hours in advance, we will go down the night before and book some hotels with other parents.” She later described that this sometimes turns into a two-day event due to that.

“Football season is flies by in a blink of an eye,” said one fairly intoxicated father. “We don’t miss any games because before you know it, their four years are done. This is our second kid to go through the program so the second time around we learned to live it up a little more.” The father of two also made a joke about his son red-shirting one season so they get another year to come.

Making my way towards the stadium near game time I decided to look back at the tents and groups. Most had made their way in and some have decided to pull out lawn chairs and watch from a distance in the parking lot. So I went and asked them why they drive here, just to sit in the parking lot.

“I like football and I like beer. If I sit out here I can do two of my favorite things,” said a tipsy father. In theory that makes sense, and technically it doesn’t matter where you sit, you’ll see the same game.

So I made my way into the stadium to watch the game finally after the long, but mostly fun day of tailgating. So no matter where you go to college, football is a big deal, but the tailgating scene is a little different throughout the ranks of colleges and is unique in it’s own way.