Tailgate Update

Although Grant and I have yet to brew any beer, preparations are underway for Mizzou Tailgate Season. Notice I didn't say "Football" Season. I may go to a game or two, but I may have to get a job to afford to buy a ticket. Non-conference games will cost $30 per ticket. Texas and Iowa State's games will cost $45 each. And in a shocking display of flagrant price-gouging, tickets to see the Nebraska Cornhuskers (a team running as fast as it can from its former glory) cost a ludacris $55 dollars each. The average family of four will shell out $220 for tickets plus at least $30 for snacks, drinks, and souveniers. Who in their right mind would pay $250 to see an amateur sporting event? Who would pay that much to support an athletic program falling apart at the seams?

No, the University didn't kill the young football player who died in practice a month ago, but they did lie about the circumstances of his death and after telling the medical examiner not to be at the press conference, they lied again and said she couldn't be there due to a scheduling conflict. These are just the more recent problems of an athletic department out of control. After the recruiting scandal that the basketball team endured last year, Head Coach Quin Snyder was allowed to keep his job because he claimed ignorance. (I thought the captain of the ship is always responsible for the actions of his crew.) Then he had a losing season, failed to get his team to the Big Dance for the second year in a row and was then told he would not be fired no matter what. Then he encouraged his star player Linus Kleiza to enter the NBA draft and wished him luck. So now, we have a program with no star player, NCAA sanctions limiting recruitment and scholarships, and a head coach who doesn't even try to keep his "student"-atheletes in school. Oh, yeah, I can see why we wouldn't want to fire him!

With both major sports coming off of disappointing seasons, ticket prices going through the roof, new arenas being named for students who attended other schools and cheated their way through college, players dying, players committing rapes, and players leaving for the pros two years early, how can the sorry state of Missouri Athletics be considered anything but a complete and miserable failure? How can they turn things around? By ridding themselves of the one ultimate cause of all that has gone wrong in the past six years. Athletic Director Mike Alden must go! From pushing coaching legend Norm Stewart out the door, to not pushing coaching wash-out Quin Snyder out the same door, Alden has made one blunder after another. He has shown that he has no control over his department and that he has no idea how to fix the problems that plague it. If the captain is responsible for the actions of his crew, then the Board of Curators need not look any farther than the office of the A.D. to find who is to blame for the sad state of affairs that has made the athlectic department the disgrace that it is today.

So, what are we the fans to do? Drink beer in the parking lot while listening to the Tigers on the radio, of course. Home tailgate dates are as follows: 9/10/05 vs. New Mexico, 9/17 vs. Troy, 10/1 vs. Texas, 10/15 vs. Iowa St., 10/22 vs. Nebraska, 11/12 vs. Baylor. Make plans now on joining us in the new parking lot at Reactor Field (south of the Red Cross Blood Donor Center) on Providence. We will be in a Black, 1976 Chevrolet Truck with Mizzou adornments all over it. (Look for a bunch of idiots falling out the back of an old dually truck while drinking home brew!) Hope to see you there!