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Boston College Tailgate Wrap-Up:

            - Lot 1, College Park, MD

Tailgate Quote: 

“”*

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*Wanted to do a quote by J, but it was too disturbing even for the internet!

Overall:

Ah yes, the return of fall, the 90 degree heat, the stifling humidity, and of course the sun burn.  Nothing like that fall weather to get you in the mood for tailgating.  I don’t get it, sure it wasn’t sunny this past week, but the temperatures were awesome, then the football game comes and someone hits a switch and we are back in the middle of July!  Anyway, I guess things could be worse, we could have a major hurricane bearing down on us and have our game moved to 10:00 am local time.  That would basically be a 4:00 Tailgate start for those keeping track at home.  However when Hurricane Gustav finally hits and causes millions of dollars worth of damage, which it is going to do, I hope they tally up the financial loses Maryland will receive after losing out on every high school recruit that had to watch the Maryland Delaware Game on ESPN instead of having it tucked neatly away on ESPNU!

But back to the Tailgate, it was nice to see everyone after a nice long break from Maryland athletics (let’s face it after the Bowl game and Basketball Season we all needed a nice long break).  It was also nice to see Maren at the game, who can now speak better English than the Queen herself!  Of course John had her up all night going over her D7 Flash Cards, but the hard work paid off.  I was certainly impressed.  I’m also glad she is learning to speak before she moves to New England because she’d have no chance at properly pronouncing the letter “R” once up there.  It was also nice to see Sydney who seems to be growing like a weed, and luckily seems to have gotten her intelligence from her mom’s side instead of her dad’s, so we can all breath easy about that. 

But overall it was just nice to be back in the old familiar territory of Lot 1 eating off the grill, drinking cheap (yet delicious) beer, and telling stories from college.

Tailgate Highlights:

You know this one is kind of weird.  Usually I pick something funny that happened or something embarrassing, but in all actuality there is one moment that sticks out at me when I had to think of what the highlight was, though this is supposed to be the highlight for the whole tailgate, this is more of a personal highlight.  But there was just something about that moment pulling into the parking lot with the sun starting to shine, the shadows of the trees still long, the sight of the illegal parked cars being towed, and the last bit of morning chill still in the air and as I was in the bed of my truck unloading stuff, I looked up to see John, E, and Maren walking up and for a brief second it felt like the golden era of tailgating again.

Now don’t get me wrong, historians will argue that right now we are in the golden era of D7 tailgating and they’re right, but like looking at American in the 21^st century, and looking at America in the 1950’s you can clearly see how far our country has come, yet people still talk about the good ole days.  And that is kind of how I feel.  We live in a wonderful world of tailgating with grills that are coolers (and now I see coolers that are scooters), one of the greatest flip cup tables man can create, and food that is actually food.  But I often look back on those days when we had that little propane grill that never worked, the cheapest beer college jobs could buy, a package of hot dogs, and maybe if we splurged a bag of chips. 

It is kind of like one of the all time greatest D7 tailgates ever in 1998 when we played UVA in the pouring rain with just me, John, Brian, and Chris huddled around a bottle of whiskey (huddled being the key word since it was like 45F out).  Sure things are always better when you look back on them, but still it was nice for the brief moment to think back on those days when the only care in life was tailgating. 

Tailgate Lowlights:

The friggin heat, my God it was unbearable at times.  No breeze, no shade except for those parked in chairs on the median.  I know that is pretty much what my forecast called for, but when I was putting those words down on paper (well on a Word Document anyway) I didn’t really comprehend how crappy they were.  Anyway, hopefully the next time we have a tailgate like that will be when we are in Tampa for the ACC Championship game.

Live from College Park Downs:

We had 3 races on the card this week.  Though none of them were exciting, I mean I didn’t even have a horse all day within 2 spaces of it’s finish line, except maybe when I had Miami on the outside and there was one snake eyes rolled.  But it was brutal, of course those who won probably had a different recollection of the events.  The first pot of 18$ was split 4 ways by Lee, Brian, J, and Megan who each collected $4.50.  The second pot coincidently was also 18$ with $4.50 going to Chris, Megan, Marcy, and J.  The final race of the day was of course the “Double Up Derby”, this pot was 30$ and it was won by Lee, Brian, Marcy, and Chris.  I would give a more descriptive re-telling of the story, but my horses were so far back that I didn’t even pay attention to the finish.     

LRC:

The left right center game started out slow this year.  The first game saw 7 players vying for 21$ and when all the chips were gone Justin was left standing.  However, Justin probably should have waited because shortly after playing game 1, the second game was followed up by a 14 man game with 42$ on the line.  Now 2008 is such a different year than 2007 when it comes to LRC.  Back in those days I not only would quickly throw all my chips into the middle, but it also seemed as though anyone standing near me had the same fate befall them as well.  But that was then.  This year, yeah I still couldn’t hold on to my chips, but my good neighbor Snively could.  He held out forever with his lone chip until the far end of the table was finally whittled down to their last chip.  Then he unfortunately (for him!) could hold out no longer and rolled a beautiful R which gave that chip to me.  Then on the far end of the table a C was rolled and just like that I had stolen the pot.  In fact stolen may not be a harsh enough word because I won LRC and didn’t roll once in the last 15 minutes.  But as Bix likes to point out to every new comer who’s learning the game “You are never out!”.

Punt, Pass, and Kick:

This year will feature a very exciting addition to the Punt, Pass, and Kick challenge; the addition of the D7 PPK Trophy.  Now I know it looks pretty fancy, but don’t worry I only invested about 5 minutes of my day making the thing even though it appears as though I took a week off of work.  The idea behind the trophy is that whoever wins the PPK gets to put their initials on it so that their glorious achievements will forever be remembered.  We also put the date and total # of parking spots that the winner accumulated.  The idea came from the Freedom Rock in the movie Red Dawn where they wrote the names of their fallen comrades, but this honor is much better because you actually live to see it. 

Anyway the first name on the trophy was Chris, who belted a rock solid 42 spaces.  I was pretty bitter being that I had 41 and he cleared his last space by the length of a Bud Light Can, but that’s life.  J was also in the running but his failed field goal attempt dropped him from a chance to win it, all the way down to 4^th place.  You better go work on that Charlie Brown!

Flip Cup Results:

This is getting tough to keep track of.  It is basically like trying to record complete chaos with a note pad and a pen that sometimes chooses to work.  So you will have to bear with me as I try to decipher my notes.  Also it doesn’t help that a lot of the participants I didn’t know.  If you played flip cup and I didn’t mention your name, at the next tailgate let me know and I will make sure I get it correct.  If I didn’t mention you and you don’t read this website, we’ll then I guess it doesn’t really matter.  So anyway, here goes, note taking don’t fail me now!

Oh and I want to point out, this was the first tailgate of the year, and if anyone doubts that fact, we’ll then they didn’t watch the flip cup action, some of it was brutal.  I think at one point Surin and I debated the theory of time travel and if it was indeed possible, before we actually had to start thinking about drinking. 

The First Series:  The first series of the day featured “Ralph’s Rowdies” vs. “The Freaky Friedgen’s”.  RR was composed of Cory, Justin, Juanita…excuse me The Black Widow, Surin, Fred, and Megan.  The FF’s was made up of Chris, J, Brian, Me, Lee, Lisa, Chuck, and Emily.  You see we have it already, I have 6 people on RR and 8 on FF.  Even when I don’t drink much this is difficult.  Anyway, FF got out to a hot start, but as we were planning our victory parade down Campus Drive, something happened.  The edge never returned and the next thing you know we lost 4 straight.  It was brutal.  Everything that could go wrong did.  4-1 RR’s was the final.  Ouch.

The Second Series: This one featured roughly the same teams.  RR added Bill and Eric Duce’s brother Brian, aka Missy’s Husband and Patience and Megan Y were added to the FF’s.  Though we sported a new look, FF’s struggles continued and we promptly rung up loss #5 in a row.  But all was not lost, because during that game one, something magical happened.  I don’t know what it was, and I don’t know exactly when it occurred, but after that game something felt a little different.  Sure the results were not immediate.  But we did take 2 in a row before we lost again.  That made it 2-2.  Games 5 and 6 were also very friendly to the Freaky ones and redemption was had 4-2. 

The Third Series: Things changed up a bit for the third series.  Team one, or the “Oh he steal it”’s was composed of Brian, Lee, Lisa, Megan Y, Chris, Me, and Emily.  The “Joe Smith Tap In’s” was made up of Duce, Patience (the trader), Chuck, Justin, Megan, Bill and one other guy.  It’s starting to get hazy a little in the note book.  Anyway the OHSI’s came out rip roaring and once again took the early 1-0 lead.  However, just like the RR-FF series, the first team to win, never won again.  The JSTI’s easily dominated the rest of the way and claimed a 3-1 win (we only played best of 5 since game time was looming). 

The Forth Series:  Or as Surin called it, the Flip Cup Championship Series…or something of the sort.  This was a one game playoff to determine the Intergalactic Championship of the Universe, so needless to say the stakes were high.  Team one was made up of Me, Lee, Brian, Chris, Patience (no longer a trader), and J.  We referred to ourselves as the “Seductive Six” in fact J wouldn’t even answer to any other name!  The other team was made up of Surin, Juanita, Fred, a girl, a girl, and a guy (I know I apologize for the lack of detail).  They called themselves “The One Flip Ponies”.  Now this was pretty intense.  Things were neck and neck and TOFP had a chance to win at the very end, but J, who has dedicated his flip cup season to his new son/daughter would not allow SS (or S squared) to lose.  J one flipped the walk off flip and SS had it’s intergalactic championship!   Way to go J.  If you were a part of a car, it’d be the automatic locks!  (You thought I was going to say clutch didn’t you?). 

So there you have it.  We are underway in the 2008 season.  If you don’t like your standings, then step it up (and try to migrate towards the team you think has a better chance when the sides are beginning to form).

The good news is that everyone who played at least got the taste of victory in their mouth, unfortunately victory tastes like warm Bud Light with someone else’s back wash, but it’s still victory!  Patience takes the player of the day award, though J’s one flip to win the 4^th series was definitely the highlight of the day. 

Weather Report Card:

I was extremely nervous Saturday morning when I was driving across Kent Island and the Western Sky had the look of that thing that destroys the world in “Never Ending Story” (hey that’s two movie references in one recap, may be time to cut back on the TV there Bob).  Anyway, I told myself in regards to judging my forecast, which called for no rain, I said to myself that if I don’t use my windshield wipers I don’t have to acknowledge that it rained on Saturday, and though it may have been extremely dangerous at some times, I never turned them on, and for that reason there will be no mention of Saturdays rain, which is probably ok since based on our 9:45 attendance it doesn’t appear that most of you were aware what the weather was like before 10:00 am anyway!

The “Save the Terrapin” Drive:

First of all for those who didn’t know the “Save the Terrapin” Drive has come to a successful conclusion.  We saved like 20 some turtles right before the ban on Terrapin Harvesting was put in place and with the timing of the move we can take pride that those 20 were among the luckiest of all.  I’m sure they would have been pissed knowing they were among the last harvested before the ban, talk about your bad luck, but due to our efforts there are now 20 more turtles that can go off and start families and work on bringing the population of our state reptile and mascot back to where it was in the early 20^th century.  So I think we should all be very proud of our efforts. 

However, this does leave a void that needs to be filled.  We have been kicking around some ideas with what to do with the money, and I think we all agree that we should collect some of the money we gamble for something constructive, and it was decided that we are going to use the money for a general tailgate fund.  That way we can use it to pay for our website, pay for the pumpkin carving prizes, and pay for solo cups and all the other supplies that will be used by everyone.  Saturday’s tailgate brought our budget up to $21.50.  Overall a pretty good start. 

Tailgate MVP:

Usually it is fun to drag giving this award out to J until late in the season, but not this year.  J put together quite the resume at the Delaware tailgate.  He was the first one in the Lot, he also took the table home which I can’t even begin to explain how much that helps me this season.  He also had the biggest clutch flip of the day at the flip cup table, and all this knowing that at any moment he could be getting a call from Mary saying meet me at the hospital.  Well done J, you are the first MVP of the season.  I just hope you didn’t throw up on the way home (not from alcohol, but from heat exhaustion).

Honorable Mention (in no particular order): 

Lot of people could be up for this.  I obviously had to load the table by myself, leave 2 hours before the tailgate start time, and drive 3 other drunks home (Ok, they weren’t that drunk but still!), yet I don’t think I had a particularly good tailgate, I just felt like I was just kind of there, not really bringing anything to the tailgate.  Chris and Megan came in from Boston so that is some points there and Mrs. Bixler finally made a tailgate appearance and brought the wonderful peanut butter bars.  The Forrests also made an appearance and were right on time for the first time since we lived in our dorms and only had to walk out the door to be at the tailgate.  Brian, well Brian was there at any rate, do I can’t really single out a true honorable mention, so if you were at the tailgate, AND you are reading this, put yourself on the list.

Conclusion

Well we have one game in the books already, which is great, but at the same time it is kind of like opening your first Christmas present.  Once you open it, you know you now have one less present waiting to be opened.  Overall a good start to the season, not a great one, I think we can certainly do better.  It will help to have Jason and Jen back next week, and with the Cal game’s noon start we may be able to get another appearance from the Forrest clan (he, he, he…than sounds like some undiscovered Amazonian tribe!).  So everyone be ready to bring it for the Cal game in two weeks.

So until then, don’t forget:

• When there is a code red sunburn warning in the D7 forecast, you best take heed!
• J’s impending fatherhood hasn’t not affected his flip cup skills nor lessened his desire to win at flip cup.
• The next time Justin has an urge to give me a cigar, just pull one out of the box, light one side of it, and start unraveling all the tobacco until it falls apart.  That will save me the trouble.
• There IS such a thing as a couples bachelor party.
• Perhaps we need to start enjoying our tailgates knowing we are still a part of the BCS cause I’m not so sure how long that is going to last.

Now on to California.  This one has memorable tailgate written all over it.