Tailgate Schmailgate

The University of Missouri has lost its mind. Kegs and large amounts of alcohol are now forbidden at tailgates. Those accosted by the MU Police will be ordered to dump out their beer or leave the premises. I wonder what they will do to Rich Riesenbeck. Rich owns Golden Eagle Distributing in Hannibal MO. They distribute Anheuser-Busch products to northeast Missouri. Rich parks his half million dollar Golden Eagle tour bus in Lot G directly south of the stadium for tailgating. He has multiple keg taps coming directly out of the side of his bus. I wonder if the MU Po-Po will make Rich dump out his multiple kegs or vacate the lot that he pays $10,000 annually for the right to park in. If not, then they better not bother the other 60,000 fans who come to games primarily to tailgate rather than watch the historically hapless Tigers lose year after year. Sure they won a bowl game last year. But Brad Smith is gone now, and they will have to actually rely on everyone on the team rather than one superstar to be successful. When they fail, I and everyone I know will want kegs and large amounts of alcohol on hand to make going to games worth the hassle.

Ticket prices have skyrocketed. Free parking has been eliminated. No alcohol can be sold or consumed in the staduim unless you are filthy rich and can afford to buy a luxury suite where they sell beer and provide waitstaff. (The same is true at basketball games.) Tuition is up nearly 400% since I began college in 1990. (Making MU the most expensive school in the Big 12. Except for Baylor which is the only private school in the conference.) And now they want to drive away the few of us who have put up with all of this crap over the years by making grown adults dump out their beer if the police think the beer to tailgater ratio is too high. Don't worry: if MU keeps this up, there won't be anybody left for the cops to harrass before long. This University needs to remember the people who continued to buy tickets throughout the 80's and 90's even though Missouri posted only three winning seasons in those 20 years. They need to remember that it was us Commoners who put 30,000 asses in the seats of a stadium that holds 60,000 when the Tigers sucked so bad that the rich alumni (to whom the University is catering now) wouldn't bother showing up. I remember a time when Mizzou gave away tickets to try to get people in the seats for telivised games. I remember parking for free anywhere you could find a space. I remember having fun at tailgates because no matter how bad the team was, at least we had beer. Now the MU fun police are trying to take away the last bastion of what made being a Mizzou fan tolerable.

I'm almost glad I didn't buy a tailgatin' truck. No I'm not. I want a truck so gaudy, so audacious, and so visible that the MU Gestapo couldn't ignore it or the drunken fans trying to have a little fun in, on, or around it. Just try to make us dump out our beer. I dare you. But first, let's go to the Anheuser-Busch bus and make them pour theirs out. While we're at it, let's make sure the big wigs in the luxury boxes dump theirs or vacate the premises.

"For All We Call Mizzou" is the name of the fundraising campaign MU has been involved in for the past couple of years. Their goal is to raise $1 Billion. All long as I have a pulse, I'll tell everybody who'll listen not to give this pathetic institution one red cent. How can you raise over $600 million dollars to date and still increase tuition 38% in the three years since the fundraising campaign began? How can you justify charging thousands of dollars a year for parking passes for sports events (tailgating) and then tell the peole who spent that ridiculous amount of money that they can't have kegs or large amounts of beer (even if they have designated drivers)? How can you justify spending $50 million on a new rec center on campus that no one was allowed to vote on while half the state was up in arms about the $25 million you spent on the Paige Arena? All of this insane spending, fundraising, and new regulations will do nothing but alienate the few of us who have remained loyal all these years when Mizzou was the laughing stock of the conference.

Today is the first football game. We have free passes to the Zimmer Radio group tailgate which will be located between the Football field and the old Hearnes center. They have kegs. Many, many kegs. I feel a political protest coming on. Wait'll they get a load of me. Wait'll.