Old Person Bloggers Tell Us We Suck At Tailgating

I saw this blog post before all those comments went up. Glad Penn students are trashing this lady like she deserves.

That said, I agree with her general sentiment that not enough Penn students are taking advantage of our awesome football team. Maybe it’s just me, but the tailgates and even moreso the games this year have been great fun, some of the highlights of my senior year so far.

I don’t really agree that “college students are not universally “supposed” to “root, root, root for a home team,” no matter how good the team is” and that “football is not part of the equation at most schools.” Sure, maybe football is not “universally” part of the college experience, but it actually is a big part of the equation at a lot of schools, and that should, in my opinion, be the case at Penn as well.

So Penn students, bash this Sally Hingston schmuck all you want, but at least take this from what she wrote: for all the fun that Penn students do have, way more of us can be having a lot more fun by going to the football games.

Let’s start this Saturday against Columbia: http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=102812406452498

Seems someone’s just bitter because their last name’s the result of a century-old typo made by a great-uncle with awful penmanship.

Noah, I agree that tailgating and college sports can be great fun, but it’s just not part of the Penn culture in 2010. Changing a school’s culture is something that takes a long time. It’s possible, but it’s not going to happen suddenly, no matter how good the football team is. Writing and ranting about it won’t make a difference. Penn athletics just aren’t a big matter of conversation among most students. At schools were football games are a big thing, it’s because alumni and parents and professors are strongly tied to the teams, which gets students motivated. Free hot dogs aren’t going to get most students to walk down to Franklin Field.

That being said, there’s no reason to say Penn Athletics/the UA/whomever aren’t doing a great job trying to get the momentum going. It’s just going to take some time — and don’t expect most undergrads to get converted overnight.

Hingston has been a hack at Philadelphia Mag. Just had a poetically waxing piece
about shipping her son off to college.

Likelihood of her doing the research and attending the tailgate — 0.01%

On principle, she is not too far off. But obviously she has too much time
on her hands while thinking up what sorta “feature” noise to write for
the next issue of Philadelphia.

By the way, I have a subsciprtion to this mag — $10 for 2 years. Comes in handy
at my house in 2 ways

1) Read it when i go to the “office”
2) save it as kindling for winter months.

Overall score C- from Hingston — who has seen better days

I also think Hingston misses the point in that when Penn gets students to come to the tailgates —regardless of whether they continue into the football game — they are getting people to rally around Penn sports, even if it’s for an hour, outside the stadium. The fact is that athletics don’t play the same role in the Penn community that they did when Hingston’s generation went here.

Secondly, ‘root root root for the home team’ is a baseball reference, so it really has no place in a blog post about football.

Lastly, her line about miles of empty seats on national TV is entirely uninformed. Franklin Field sits over 50 thou. How she expects 10 thousand undergrads to fill it for any event that doesn’t involve Usain Bolt is a mystery. Our attendance is more or less on track with the other Ivies.

Noah – I share your sentiment “Sure, maybe football is not “universally” part of the college experience, but it actually is a big part of the equation at a lot of schools, and that should, in my opinion, be the case at Penn as well.”

Hillary – Your conclusion (unfortunately but realistically) trumps! “That being said, there’s no reason to say Penn Athletics/the UA/whomever aren’t doing a great job trying to get the momentum going. It’s just going to take some time — and don’t expect most undergrads to get converted overnight.”

as a member of the penn athletics community, it is honestly embarrassing to play at franklin field sometimes. last year the football team was playing for the ivy league championship and half of the 12,000 person crowd left before half time. How do you think it feels to be presented a trophy in front of 6,000 people? i find it insulting that “After the tailgate, we went home to pass out and nap, not to study in the library.” lets be honest, athletes at penn really dont get much. we arent on scholarship, we dont have fans, and we dont have the big athletic budgets that schools our size do. there are times at this school where i honestly feel like playing a sport is a disability. we put in 30+ hours a week during the season in an attempt to try to win a championship for the school. the least you could do is watch a game and support those athletes after drinking for an hour at a tailgate. the tailgates were started so you could drink then enjoy the game, not drink then nap. you may be surprised by how much fun it can be if your drunk and watching a football game in a student section.

also, as much as i dont like Hingston, she may be right about penn students not knowing how to have fun. you can claim that penn is “the party ivy” but that is just as good as saying youre the fastest cripple or the smartest kid with down syndrome. at the end of the day, penn can never be as much fun as most state colleges because our school has a social disability. most students that get into penn were doing homework on friday nights in high school instead of going out and drinking with friends. penn just doesnt attract kids that like to party, let alone watch a football game. i will agree that there are about 2500 kids at penn that do know how to have fun but dont say that penn knows how to have fun when only 25% of the school actually knows how to have fun.

in the end, penn will never be able to come close to filling the stadium but if you are going to go to the tailgate at least show up for the game. its free and a much better use of your time than napping.

If the definition of “having fun” requires being drunk, isn’t that kind of pathetic in itself?

@ Hillary. Can you try and score an interview with Hingston and have her back her words

Or get her an invite to the next tailgage.

Then have her write a coda to this piece.

You have nothing to lose. Either does she — as her journalistic credibility is pretty low already

Just a thought

– FOJL

lol. really? you picked the wrong school to be sober in

hey, henry dildeaux.

be happy you get 6000 fans. i’ve been to baseball games, soccer games, and volleyball games and they don’t get 1/10 of that. i’m also on the track team, and i can’t remember more than 50 people in the stands for our last home meet (penn relays excepting of course).

if people aren’t interested, they aren’t interested. nothing penn does is going to drastically improve attendence numbers.

-mc

@henry dildeaux -

maybe you’d get more fans if you didn’t insult 75% of the undergrads at penn. or if the football team was better at, you know, playing football. congratulations if you were one of the few sweet bros who partied on friday nights in high school, but id suggest venturing out on a friday night (instead of staying in due to the 24/48 hour rule) while at penn and seeing if your opinion is the same. id also take note of one of the comments above, and ill repeat it here: there are 10,000 undergrads at penn. even if every single undergrad attended, 80% of the stadium would still be empty. for comparison, michigan state has a 75K capacity stadium and 36K undergraduates. Roughly half could be filled. Graduate students, staff, community members, and alumni eager to see quality, exciting football in a charged atmosphere make up the rest of the audience at state/public games.

im sorry that the entire campus doesn’t follow you around with kind of adulation you deserve.

@ LA: The football team won the Ivy League championship last year…dunno how much better they can be at playing football you tool.

(not on football team)

Its funny someone is telling people to party more.

Ms. Reinsberg, please grow up. Seriously, “old person bloggers”? How old are you, five?