It's football season at the shop, and the bratwursts, burgers, and chicken wings are flying out of the fresh case as customers get ready for tailgating.
While tailgating at a Milwaukee Brewers game is a great time, it doesn't have the same importance as a football tailgate. There are 81 home games...always time for another tailgate. Don't go overboard.
With football, there are so few home games and tailgating takes on an event-like status that makes each game super important. This weekend, college football kicks off, and from Seattle to Baton Rouge, millions of Americans will load food into a vehicle, drive somewhere together, and eat it in a parking lot with people they've never met.
So before the season starts, I wanted to take a tour. The great tailgating traditions of America: where they came from, who does it best, and what are some of the most interesting foods on the table.
Let's get started, and, paraphrasing one of my favorite musicals, let's start at the very beginning, because that's a very good place to start.
So who threw the first tailgate?
Here's the story everybody tells. Tailgating was born at the very first college football game, Rutgers against Princeton, November 6, 1869. Fans gathered by their wagons, grilled sausages, and a tradition was born. You'll find this in a hundred articles.
There's one very large problem with that story. Last November, Princeton's own university archives dug into the claim, and the archivist politely but definitively stated no such thing occurred. The 1869 game was very cold. It drew maybe a hundred spectators. And no source from the time records anyone eating anything. A 1901 history of Princeton athletics doesn't mention the spectators at all, and thousands of people cooking out before the game would have been mentioned if it actually happened.
The real start of tailgating happens later. In 1886, five thousand fans descended on Princeton for a game against Yale. Princeton at the time was a town whose restaurants could seat about fifty people, total. A New York restaurateur rented a room and sold dollar lunch tickets, and the New York Times described the scramble inside as worse than anything that happened on the field. Fans gave up and bought crackers and cheese at grocery stores. Princeton's archivist suggested that perhaps people started packing food for football games because college towns literally could not feed them.
I think they're probably correct.
The first tailgate was born of necessity, but the party would soon follow. By 1891, the New York Tribune was describing a parade of coaches and tally-hos rolling up Fifth Avenue to the big Yale-Princeton Thanksgiving game in Manhattan, and noted that "About all the parties in the vehicles brought their luncheons with them." Each coach got cheered as it rolled onto the field.
Vehicles. Food. Team colors. A party before kickoff. That's a tailgate, 135 years ago...just with horses instead of automobiles.
But wait, by 1906 the Times was spotting the first "automobilists" spreading picnics from hampers at Yale-Harvard!!
The word "Tailgate" first showed up in print in 1868, and it described the hinged back panel of a farm wagon. The word moved to the station wagon hatch around 1950, right when Americans were getting cars, suburbs, highways, and stadiums with oceans of parking. And "tailgate party" first appears in print in 1958, in a small-town Louisiana newspaper. It's stuck around ever since.
There's one more origin story people love to tell, and it predates both Princeton football stories. It's also probably a bit more 'Murican than even football. We're saving it for the end of the tour. You'll want to hear about it.
There's no place like home: Tailgating in the Badger State.
Let's start our tour close to home in our beloved Wisconsin.
Green Bay. Lambeau Field has hosted games since 1957, and it's just about the last NFL stadium that sits in an actual residential neighborhood. Game days feel more like block parties than anything else. Front lawns and driveways get turned into tailgating hubs, and seemingly modest houses host elaborate outdoor kitchens, flat-screen televisions mounted in garages, and lively games of cornhole on the grass.
It's a walkable festival where Midwestern hospitality and Wisconsin nice reign supreme. Visiting fans are invited to enjoy a brat, a shot, and friendly banter. "Go Pack Go" suffices as hello, goodbye, and a rally cry all in one.
Milwaukee. According to the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), Milwaukee fans were tailgating at County Stadium's very first Opening Day, April 14, 1953, when the Braves came to town. That means if SABR is right, Milwaukee was tailgating five years before the phrase "tailgate party" appeared in print anywhere in the English language. We were doing the thing before the language had agreed on a word for it.
In the Braves years, you could carry your own beer straight into County Stadium. Milwaukee baseball historian Bob Buege says fans brought six-packs, brought coolers, and in some well-publicized cases bought the cooler its own ticket so it had a seat. Unfortunately, the stadium ended that in the late 1950s. Then in 1959 a parking lot expansion added acres of asphalt and that beer still had to be drunk. Instead of partying inside the stadium, the party moved to the parking lot.
That parking lot became sacred ground for generations of Milwaukee baseball fans. When the Brewers were weighing a new ballpark in the 1990s, one argument against building downtown was that it would shrink the tailgating space. The horror! So they stayed in the Menomonee Valley, and Miller Park rose next to the old lots.
Milwaukee baseball starts out in the parking lot, walking in past hundreds of grills that got started with too much lighter fluid. The smells of brats, burgers, and all sorts of other treats welcome you, but you best pay attention because you may get smacked by someone's errant baseball throw!
My favorite part of walking through the parking lots always was hearing Bob Uecker doing pre-game (or if I was late, the first inning!) through car radios and loudspeakers. It's still strange that he's no longer calling the games, but he deserves a special shout-out for being such an important part of my favorite place to tailgate. RIP Mister Baseball - you'll always be the voice of summer to me.
Madison. And then there's Camp Randall, where I'm honestly not sure "tailgate" is even the right word. Walk toward the stadium on a football Saturday and every front lawn on the way is a party. Students and alumni packed onto porches, grills going, music playing, the whole walk one continuous celebration that nobody organizes and everybody attends. Is that a tailgate or a porchgate? I don't know, but it's one great party. While the official Badger Bash at Union South is free, features Bucky Badger, and is fun, I still prefer the chaos of the lawns.
College Football: Tailgating Professionals
While college football technically features "amateurs", the spectators are professionals, especially in the South, which I begrudgingly have to admit is the capital of tailgating.
The Grove at Ole Miss: ten acres of oaks in the middle of campus in Oxford, Mississippi. Fans started parking cars and RVs under those trees in the 1950s. Then came the fall of 1991, when rains turned the Grove into a ten-acre mud pit, and the university banned vehicles for good.
Today, the Grove on a game day has no cars, just tents. Tents with chandeliers hanging in them. Sterling silver. Candelabras. Women in pearls, men in ties, fried chicken on silver platters, and the Hotty Toddy cheer rolling through the trees. Open flames aren't even allowed, so much of the food is catered, which means one of the most famous tailgates in America contains zero physical tailgates and very little grilling. Maybe tailgating is more of a state of mind than anything else?
Tiger Stadium, Louisiana State University: LSU turns a Mardi Gras feast into a tailgate. The tables at Tiger Stadium feature boudin, jambalaya, crawfish, etouffee, and gumbo. The food is such a big deal that the fans have a cheer about food: "Hot boudin, cold couche-couche, come on Tigers, push, push, push!"
And when Florida comes to town, LSU fans will cook whole alligators on the pit. Entire gators. That's a fantastic tradition.
It's not just home games that have big parties; Florida against Georgia in Jacksonville has been called "The World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party" for decades. RV City opens days before kickoff (fans have historically lined up nearly a week out), and because the stadium sits on a river near the ocean, there's an entire yacht-tailgating scene in the marina.
I tried to find out whether it really is the world's largest outdoor cocktail party, but nobody certifies that record. Jacksonville claims the title, but no one seems to contest it.
Williams-Brice Stadium, University of South Carolina: these guys turned old railway cabooses into "Cockabooses." Combining "caboose" and "Gamecock" (the South Carolina mascot), a local real estate developer purchased 22 cabooses and a small stretch of track on which to place the cabooses right in the shadow of the stadium. The cabooses got turned into small living rooms that are perfect for eating, drinking, and generally pre-gaming a South Carolina game.
Husky Stadium, University of Washington: showing that it's not just railcars that are good for tailgating, UW fans boatgate. Husky Stadium sits directly on the water, and on game days as many as 3,400 fans arrive by boat. They actually call it sailgating, but I prefer boatgating, because what if you have a motor vessel?
You'll find everything from little skiffs to 94-foot yachts anchored off the stadium, and the private dock spots are so coveted that the waitlist runs over a hundred boats long. The stadium's own operations director compares getting a dock spot to landing season tickets at Fenway or Wrigley, and says at least twenty boats have held their spots for more than twenty years.
Tennessee and Baylor have boat scenes too (the Vol Navy starts docking on Tuesday), but nobody's setting matches Lake Washington. We just need someone to start "airgating"...what is the United States Air Force Academy doing??
Who does it best in the NFL?
On Sundays, the argument usually comes down to a few names of who puts on the best tailgate. Here's a rundown of the top competitors, non-Green Bay division:
Buffalo. Maybe the most famous tailgate in the NFL happens around a red 1980 Ford Pinto that a Bills fan named Ken Johnson bought in 1986 for three hundred dollars. A newspaper misprinted his name as "Ron" once, so now he's Pinto Ron, forever. At his lot you'll find chicken wings frying in an army helmet, bacon cooking on a saw blade, pancakes on a shovel, and pizza baked inside a filing cabinet by a man known as Pizza Pete.
Ninety minutes before every kickoff comes the ceremony: Johnson holds up a hamburger, asks for ketchup, and the crowd blasts him head to toe with ketchup bottles and mustard-loaded caulk guns. It started years ago when a friend's long-distance ketchup squirt missed the bun and hit his arm, and everybody liked it too much to stop.
Plus the Bills Mafia (the chaotic, but dedicated hardcore Bills fans) are well known for jumping through tables. It's unclear why they decided bodyslamming tables is a good idea, but it's awesome to watch.
Kansas City brings the smoker. Arrowhead's lots open more than four hours before kickoff, and the regulars roll in with full offset smokers doing brisket, ribs, and burnt ends, low and slow, the real Kansas City style we talked about back in the barbecue Dispatch. Season tickets, parking spots, and smoker recipes pass down through families together, all one inheritance. Kansas City is building a new stadium, and it will be interesting to see if the incredible tailgate culture will continue at the new place.
Philadelphia has Eagles fans, and Eagles fans, well, they have the meanest reputation in the league. However, no one can fault their dedication. They turn the sprawling asphalt desert that connects Lincoln Financial Field, Wells Fargo Center, and Citizens Bank Park into a village of customized conversion vans, retro school buses, and canopies flapping in the breeze. You'll find Philly cheesesteaks galore, plus lots more.
They're not just meatheads, though; they are also incredible planners, which you'll hear about later.
Does baseball even tailgate, bro?
Honestly, not much in comparison to football. I was looking for baseball tailgating traditions, and it was tough to find many. So I asked why some places tailgate and others don't. Is it space and laws? Or is it the people?
The honest answer is both. Space comes first, and baseball proves it. The classic ballparks were built into city neighborhoods with no parking lots at all. Milwaukee's old Borchert Field was a rectangular city block; there was nowhere to tailgate, even if you wanted to. No parking lot, no tailgate. It's that simple.
Dodger Stadium bans tailgating outright, the better to sell more Dodger Dogs, and before World Series games the LAPD puts out public reminders to deter any possible fun. The White Sox allow a modest version, small grills only, no kegs, no DJs.
County Stadium was a trailblazer. It was one of the first ballparks built with a big lot, making tailgating possible, but space doesn't make it inevitable, because plenty of stadiums have lots and no party.
People turned space into a tradition. Milwaukee had a beer garden tradition, a sausage tradition, and a love of sharing a beer and a brat with a neighbor. When COVID rules briefly banned tailgating in 2021, Brewers president Rick Schlesinger said games without it "felt like there was something awry in the universe."
I agree.
What happens when the tailgate lasts four days?
It's not just college football where the South reigns supreme; motorsports also show how the South knows how to have a big ol' outdoor party.
NASCAR was born in the South, out of moonshine runners with fast cars, and its two great cathedrals sit in Alabama and Florida. Twice a year, Talladega Superspeedway, NASCAR's biggest and fastest oval, turns roughly 3,000 acres of quiet Alabama forest into a temporary city of upwards of 175,000 people. Campers start arriving Wednesday. For a Sunday race. The infield's main drag is called Talladega Boulevard, and on Friday night comes "The Big One on the Blvd," when the drivers themselves ride a 53-foot flatbed down the Boulevard throwing beads and koozies to the crowd like it's Mardi Gras with a green flag.
Indianapolis waves the flag, so to speak, for the North. The Indianapolis 500 draws somewhere around 300,000 people, by most accounts the largest single-day sporting event on earth. The infield party zone, called the Snake Pit, dates to the 1950s, and it got so notorious that the Speedway spent two decades building grandstands over it to calm it down. The party just migrated to another turn. In 2011 the track surrendered and made it official: the Snake Pit is now a sanctioned, ticketed music festival that runs before, during, and after the race.
Outside the gates there's a campground everyone calls the Coke Lot, named for the old Coca-Cola bottling plant it faces, where the party famously does not sleep. Probably lots of Coke being consumed to keep things going, right?
Let's find some other sports that tailgate!!
Wrapping up my tour, I started looking at other, smaller sports and asking if they tailgated as well.
Professional lacrosse? Well, I don't know how big tailgating is in lacrosse, but this is how I found out how ingenious Eagles fans can be!
In January 2023, Philadelphia Eagles fans discovered that the parking lots at Lincoln Financial Field opened at 8 a.m. for a 1 p.m. Philadelphia Wings lacrosse game, but not until 4 p.m. for their own playoff kickoff that night. So they bought lacrosse tickets in droves. Purely to tailgate for twelve hours. ESPN reported fans lining up the night before. For lacrosse tickets. To not watch lacrosse. Someone didn't think that timing through!
Polo? Gloriously, yes. At the polo grounds in Millbrook, New York, tailgaters set up antique cars, crawfish boils, and tents furnished with oriental rugs, and the tailgates themselves get judged. It's the Grove with horses.
Horse racing runs the party through an infield. The Kentucky Derby's infield is the tailgate with the cars removed and the party popping, the rowdy people's counterweight to Millionaires Row up above.
And Canada? Canada deserves real credit, as CFL tailgating is alive and well: at Winnipeg's Banjo Bowl, the annual grudge match against Saskatchewan, hundreds of tailgates fill the lots, families running parties of 25 and 60 people, rival fans grilling side by side. But in Regina, tailgating outside the Roughriders' stadium wasn't legal. So in the fall of 2025, the government of Saskatchewan introduced a bill, an actual piece of provincial legislation, called the Tailgating Act, to allow it.
Props to the people of Saskatchewan who wanted to grill in a parking lot so badly that they got their legislature to write it into law. I wish the US Congress would do something so cool.
Across the ocean, we don't find tailgating. When the NFL plays London, there is no tailgating. The league builds an official fan plaza with vendor stalls outside Wembley instead, because Brits ride the tube to matches and fill the pre-game hours at the pub.
Turns out the tailgate requires some distinctly American ingredients: the car, the parking lot, and the unshakable conviction that any flat surface can become a kitchen. Take away any one of them, and you get a picnic, not a tailgate.
We even tailgated a battle
People love to say the first tailgate in American history happened on July 21, 1861, at the First Battle of Bull Run.
You can say that. It also may not be entirely true. But it really is an incredible story.
Here's what's true. That summer, most of the country believed the Civil War would be short. So when the Union army marched out to meet the Confederates at Manassas, Virginia, civilians from Washington rode out to watch, bringing picnic baskets and opera glasses. Sitting senators and congressmen were among them.
Some people think that the spectators were close up, getting shot at, in the line of fire, mucking up the battle. That's false. Most spectators watched from hills well back of the fighting.
And it's a good thing they were, because by late afternoon the Union line broke. The spectators fled down the same roads as the routed army in a Great Skeedaddle. A New York congressman named Alfred Ely was captured and spent five months in a Richmond prison. Nearly nine hundred Americans died that day, North and South, and the country went home understanding for the first time that this war would be long.
Maybe you wish to call it a tailgate, maybe you don't, but Bull Run definitely was no picnic.
A Tailgate By Any Name
Two professors at Notre Dame spent years studying tailgating, seriously studying it, with a research team and a journal article and everything. They ended up inventing a word for what a tailgate is: a "vestaval," named for Vesta, the Roman goddess of the hearth.
Their finding is that tailgaters turn their homes inside out. We haul the kitchen and the living room onto the pavement, and thousands of little households merge into one big temporary town that exists for a few hours and then vanishes. They compared it to an ancient harvest festival: a celebration of abundance in the fall, before winter comes.
I think they're right, but also, man, can academics be stuffy sometimes. Do we really need a Latin name for a party??
Happy tailgating season - here at Lake Geneva Country Meats we're ready to help you fill your grill with your favorites. Just be sure to keep the tailgate spirit alive and share with your neighbor...even if they're a fan of the other team!!
Cheers!
Nick
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