Where's the orange and black?

Something about the scene at tailgates this Saturday didn't seem quite right to me. True, I had never attended a tailgate before, but surely, I thought as I looked around, there should be more people decked out in orange and black.

After all, a tailgate is a pre-football game gathering designed to rally school spirit. But a Princeton tailgate doesn't look like the wild parties I had heard my friends from state schools brag about. If anything, it's incredibly tame and low-key - students clump around tents and car trucks while sipping beer from Styrofoam cups and grilling burgers. A tiger mascot runs around posing in photos. Taylor Swift songs drift through the air.

A close friend of mine who attends Duke described tailgates there as "a huge deal. Everyone goes. People shake up beers and spray them everywhere, so it rains beer and you get drenched. Everyone is belligerent."

The scene at tailgates this Saturday was a whole different story. Yes, there was beer - and a lot of it, as evidenced by the empty cases of Coors Light littering the grass. But it was such a relaxed setting - just groups of people standing around, drinking, chatting, eating. No screaming, no wildness, no belligerence. I also couldn't help but notice that the turnout was quite low, despite the beautiful weather. There were maybe a couple hundred people clustered around several tents and trucks. I kept thinking, where are all the people - and, more importantly-where is all the face-paint?

Andrea Wolberg '13 offered one take on the humdrum atmosphere. "At state schools, like University of North Carolina, everyone actually goes to the game. Parents drive up and it's a whole weekend event. Princeton tailgates are an afterthought," she said.

I'd be lying if I said I saw no one dressed up for the occasion. Some people wore Princeton football jerseys or had painted tiger stripes on their arms or the names of football players on their exposed stomachs. Obviously a handful of students cared about the impending football game against Lafayette - or at least knew Princeton would be playing against Lafayette.

Nevertheless, in the sea of student tailgaters, there was a surprising - if not amazing - lack of explicit Princeton spirit. Many of the people there, apparently, did not go to the football game. As one student explained to a freshman, "Nobody goes to the game. You'll be alone in there." Princeton tailgating, in other words, seems to be a bit like Newman's Day or Lawnparties: a good excuse to drink beer on a Saturday afternoon.

Maybe this strange lack of athletic spirit makes sense, given that Princeton is not a state school, not a "football institution," not an NCAA Division I powerhouse. And, we have a lot of other things to think about, like that problem set due Monday and that book we were supposed to read by last Wednesday.

What is surprising, though, is that the practice of tailgating is actually said to have originated at Princeton. The very first intercollegiate football game was between Rutgers and Princeton in 1869, and students hosted picnics before the game on the backs of their horse-drawn wagons (quite literally, the wagon tailgate). So tailgating is - or should be - a Princeton institution. Given this history, the apparent lack of enthusiasm about Princeton tailgates seems strange, especially when you think about how rampant school spirit is at other times of the year (Reunions, anyone?).

The USG, however, is working to reverse this. Its Athletics Promotions Working Group has implemented a program to revive athletic spirit at Princeton. Sure enough, to achieve this goal, it jumped on the tailgating bandwagon. Last weekend, the USG sponsored a sort-of tailgate called the Fall Football Bash. While this University-sponsored event had a different character than the unofficial student tailgating (read: not so boozy), it had similar draws, featuring live music and free food.

U-Councilor Carter Greenbaum '12, who helped plan the event, said, "The Fall Football Bash is part of an ongoing commitment to promote athletics and school spirit by featuring one game each month and drawing students to watch the games with free T-shirts, food and other giveaways. The USG is actively involved in promoting athletics."

Perhaps this new push from the USG will help persuade more Princetonians to attend tailgates - and, more importantly, the games. Elizabeth Carnahan '13, seems to have the tailgating-football routine down pat. "I love tailgates! I go to every one. And I always go to the games after to support the football team," she said.

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So how come more of us aren't like that? Maybe the solution is simple: All it takes to get Princetonians out of the library and onto the tailgate fields is an age-old rivalry. Take, say, Princeton and Harvard. Even if you, like me, are not a football fanatic (I still don't fully understand the rules of the game), maybe the prospect of brutally destroying the Harvard Crimson will be sufficient reason to come out and support the team.

Greenbaum says he expects to see higher attendance at the Harvard game scheduled for Oct. 23. "I believe this year, particularly with respect to the upcoming Harvard game, you will see a turnout unlike any other in recent Princeton memory," he said. So maybe for that game we'll all wake up at 10 a.m. to start tailgating, paint our faces orange and lose our voices screaming silly chants in the stands.

That is, unless we have problem sets to do. Or essays to write. Or we're just too lazy to walk all the way to the stadium.

As Wolberg pointed out, at Princeton, "we're not here for the football."