Still unsure as to whether or not Georgetown has a football team? Me, too. But meandering over to the center of campus last Saturday, I noticed something. Sure there were a bunch of people at our beautiful, four-years-in-progress Field That Still Somehow Has No Real Name, but I didn’t stop. Crowds freak me out and Jack the Mascot gives me nightmares. But that’s neither here nor there. I wandered on over to the McDonough parking lot and came across the hidden gem of Georgetown Saturday afternoons: the tailgate.
That’s right. There is tailgating here on the Hilltop, you just have to look for it. It’s not required that your football team have a stellar record or a big time, pay-your-players program to merit a tailgate in the parking lot. In fact, you don’t even need to have been to a Georgetown football game to participate. Tailgating at Georgetown seems to work on one simple Field of Dreams-esque principle: If you bring the keg, they will come.
So, like any hard-hitting, reporting-oriented journalist, I tried to find out more about the smashed scene. I took on the beast, voice recorder in one hand and a Solo cup in the other. You know, just to fit in.
At first, I was confused. There is no real entry point. The tailgate—like many of the people by the end of it—is a kind of amorphous entity, moving and expanding out onto the Wolfington lawn or onto McDonough’s front steps. So the challenge is moving with it, keeping yourself in the eye of the sloppy storm.
Rule number one of guys’ attire for tailgating: jerseys or nothing. Like the beverages, chest hair is in great supply. Be careful though, if your chest hair is a little too scraggly, it risks being ripped out by a bigger, bare-chested buddy who wants to blow the strands off of his hands and make a wish. The experience is similar to watching a father gorilla groom his young son, only much more violent, savage and funny. Football’s got nothing on these animals.
Speaking of football, it so happened that there actually was a game. Some knew. Some didn’t. Most didn’t care. There’s even rumors of a tailgate this weekend—a weekend when the football team is 500 miles away for a game at Holy Cross.
“I’ve never been to a game before in my life,” admitted Chris Curran (COL ’09) as Georgetown was down one touchdown to No. 21 Yale during halftime. “I just come because it’s a hodgepodge of activity here.”
It really is one giant, Hoya mishmash gravitating to the glistening keg. Most friends, brothers, sisters, sons and fathers started their day at the game and were just looking for a free, cool drink at halftime. But the place is a black hole. It sucked in every type of folk until the very end of the game, unaware they missed an entire half of play where their classmates were trying to pull off a titanic upset. But the next time they saw the padded Hoyas, they served as a sort of way-too-giddy receiving line, encouraging them as they headed to the locker room.
The one sport that every tolerant tailgater wants to see from start to finish doesn’t involve pigskin or pads. It’s dizzy bat. And if you can fight off the vertigo to hold down your Kashi and Keystone, you’ll be itching to play all afternoon. The staple game of Georgetown tailgates, it involves a hollow Wiffle Ball bat, beer, a crushed can and a fired up crowd screaming like a bunch of intoxicated drill sergeants.
It works like this: pour beer into bat; drink beer out of bat; put knob of bat on ground and spin around 15 times or until falling over; pick yourself up after you fall; pick yourself up again, you’re embarrassing yourself; get up to the plate and try to Babe Ruth the crushed can as far as humanly possible.
“I’m swinging for the fences,” yells Mike Miscangna (MSB ’08). “Then I’m giving you all a hug and a kiss on the lips!” He didn’t follow through on any of those three plans. Thank you, Jesus.
The All-Star of the dizzy bat demographic had to have been Joan Price. The cardigan-wearing 74-year-old stepped up to the plate—of her own free will—and put in four solid hacks. (Officials let her work with one extra strike because she’s, like, old.) She didn’t make contact, but it’s understandable. Unfortunately, dizzy bat had not yet found its way to Colorado State in 1955. Nicknamed “The Legend,” she had multiple students requesting she adopt them on the spot, but that didn’t distract her from the task at hand.
“I’d do anything for a drink right about now,” she said.
Amen, Joan. See you at homecoming.
