Photo: Rubberball/Mike Kemp (Getty Images)
Sticky would be the best way to describe a tailgate at Florida International University, where students pack the compact stadium parking lot and get drunk off cans of cheap American beer. Everyone is mucky from a combination of spilled beer and dripping sweat. The lot is also loud as each frat brings its own speaker system to blast their own brand of house music.
Skip The Circus: Create The Perfect Tailgate At Home
Almost no one attends FIU home games, so everyone puts their all into tailgating because they won’t be sitting through a dull, meaningless game in an alcohol-induced nausea. That results in a horde of 17- to 23-year-olds trying to get themselves passed-out drunk by 1:30 p.m. This would be fine if FIU students got happy-drunk, but the douchebaggery already common among frat members is spurred on by Natty Ice. Members of the FIJI frat will often harass non-frat males who come by their tent. Frat members sometimes also entice women to drink, even if those women want nothing to do with them, and there have been instances of sexual harassment that go ignored. This isn’t to say that every frat member is rude or a harasser, but it is common enough to be off-putting.
The lot is covered in litter, smashed cans, and unattended drunk people. Most of the people inside FIU’s tailgates don’t assist others who are on the floor, often puking. Sometimes people even take photos and laugh at drunkards on the floor. The police who hang at the edges of tailgate do nothing to intervene in the madness, they simply disperse the tailgate when 1:30 p.m. comes around.
Do It Better: The Ultimate Way to Tailgate Your College Football Game
If you really want to stand outside in a parking lot, drink beer, and get beat on by the Florida heat, avoid Sweetwater and make the drive out to Hard Rock Stadium instead. Sure, you have to pay for parking there, but at FIU, you get what you pay for, and as a free event, that isn’t much.
