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Road to Game Day: Week 1, Gainesville

Sep 8, 2008, 2:15 PM UTC

Words by Keith Arnold, who is touring the country with his brother Phil as they invade a different college campus each Saturday during the football season. They’ll be reporting back in this space with their various adventures. You can also keep tabs on their vagabonding over at RoadtoGameDay.com. This weekend, they were in

Gainesville

for the Miami-Florida game.
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â†µâ†µAs we now fancy ourselves sports reporters, and put more exactly, sports culture reporters, it’s our job to describe what the atmosphere for the Miami-Florida game was like this weekend. Luckily we can cheat and just show you pictures and videos, and save our brains from hurting any more after a long and crowded day spent between bars, tailgaters, and Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, better known as The Swamp, doing “research.” But before we just give you the visuals, here are a few thoughts about the crazy weekend which marked the first stop on the Road to Game Day. â†µ

â†µâ†µFlorida and Miami students are on the right side of the genetic bell curve. We saw a lot of good looking co-eds, and when those pretty girls get that Southern accent going, I could listen to them read the phonebook. I suppose there’s a bit of social Darwinism at play, and the sheer necessity to wear less clothes probably motivates you to hit the treadmill. Either way, the bar for the ladies has certainly been set high after stop one on the RTGD. â†µ

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â†µâ†µGainesville doesn’t have a centralized tailgate zone like you’ll see at other schools. But it certainly gets the most out of the space it has. As you walk up 13th Street and head towards University Avenue, every inch of land is utilized for tailgating. If it’s grass, dirt, or concrete, Florida fans will figure out how to tailgate on it. Front yards and sidewalks are sold for profit, and people just pop a tent and set up shop.â†µ

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â†µThe people watching was incredible, and could be a sport by itself. Both team’s fans are pretty similar. They share a home state, storied traditions, and seem to feel pretty entitled, and rightfully so. That said, Hurricane Fan and Gator Fan can both get pretty ridiculous, especially if they’ve been fueling up the booze tank for eight hours in the sun. After seeing about 25,000 different young, white, male fans dressed in their Saturday best, we came to a pretty interesting parallel about the teams’ subsection of fans:â†µ

â†µâ†µMiami Fan is Vanilla Ice. Gator Fan is Eminem.â†µ

â†µâ†µHurricane fans still channel their inner Robert Van Winkle. Whether it be the flashy chains, or the cocked hat and half-limp/half-strut, I wanted to yell out “A1A,” just to see if some Miami fans yelled back “Beach Front Avenue!” It’s tough to take a twenty-year-old kid, nine Bud Lights deep, and wearing a Hurricanes basketball jersey and shorts sagging below his ass seriously as he tries to sell you his ticket for $150. At least he could’ve posed for a picture with us, which sadly, he refused to do. This was probably a wise decision, because we assume there are approximately eight warrants for his arrest from Tampa to Gainesville. â†µ

â†µâ†µAnd we know Marshall Mathers grew up on 8 Mile, but every time that played-out Kid Rock “Sweet Home Alabama” song came on, about 50 Florida guys started bobbing their head and swaying their bodies like they were about to freestyle against Bunny Rabbit in a underground rap battle.â†µ

â†µâ†µBut these guys make games like this great. That and the girls who try and match their Gator Orange clutch with the skin tight lycra dress they wear out on the town. Come to think of it, maybe the girls make games like this even greater. â†µ

â†µâ†µGod bless college football weekends. The dream continues next weekend. We’re on our way to L.A. for the Ohio State-USC game ... â†µ

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This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.

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