Tailgate parties essential part of Bruin football fun

  Jeff Agase You can find Agase under the
No. 1 balloon at the golf course three hours before game time.
E-mail him at [email protected] if
you have some lighter fluid for his $10 hibachi grill. Half a
bottle usually does the trick. Click
Here for more articles by Jeff Agase

When was the last time you shotgunned a can of Natural Light in
the sand trap of a golf course?

Unless your name is John Daly, it was probably at Brookside Golf
Course in Pasadena, adjacent to the Rose Bowl, taking part in one
of the meatier slices of Americana ““ the tailgater.

OK, so clearly I’ve made some pretty brash assumptions
here. First off, contrary to the deeply-held beliefs of many
college students, many people in the “real world”
(notice the lack of capitalization there, Puck, Syrus and Amaya
fans) wouldn’t know a can from Anheiser Busch’s
economical Natural beer family if it hit them in the head.

But ironically enough, due to the convenient juxtaposition of
students and alumni throughout the golf course, such a scenario is
more likely than you’d think.

Secondly, the embarrassingly inebriated, stumbling,
dude-I-really-could-lose-it-at-any-moment crowd that you might see
shotgunning $8 per case beers is a small, albeit very vocal
minority at UCLA football games. But it’s the fascinating,
laughter-inviting amalgamation of personalities frequenting the
Rose Bowl on Saturdays that makes the experience so unique.

Before I delve into a psychoanalysis that would make Freud shake
his head in pitiful revulsion, I’ll admit right off the bat
that my hijinx before, during and after Bruin football games would
probably warrant placing me in every one of the categories below.
So if you’re at all embarrassed to see a little bit of
yourself in any of these fan portraits, don’t be. The Getty
would be pretty boring if every picture looked the same.

“¢bull;We’ll call the first kind of fan the Keystone
Krusader (I learned alliteration, but apparently not spelling, in
English 4). He’s the guy mentioned above who actually carries
in his wallet a ledger of his 10 best keg-stand times. The problem?
By the time the 12th Natty Ice, Keystone, Pabst Blue Ribbon,
Icehouse, Miller High Life (pick his poison) goes down the hatch,
the second quarter’s already half over. Angered, but only for
a brief moment, he cracks another brew and turns up the radio
broadcast, figuring his friends will take pictures if anything
important happens.

“¢bull;The wine and cheese crowd. I regret to say my parents
belong to this group of bourgeois boosters. Where the Keystone
Krusader has ice stolen from the dorms, the wine and
cheeser’s ice comes from purified water. Where the Krusader
has stale chips and runny salsa, the wine and cheese crowd has
crackers and brie. It doesn’t make them any less of fans.
It’s mostly proletarian jealousy on my part that fuels these
abrasive words. Besides, I’m not about to alienate my parents
and their free provisions.

“¢bull;The Coach. This guy isn’t exactly sure what the
right play would have been, but he knows for damn sure it
wasn’t the one Bob Toledo called. Unless, of course, the play
gained massive yardage. Then, the Coach moans that his
4-year-old’s hamster could call plays for a team this
talented.

“¢bull;The girl that knows a whole lot more about football than
her boyfriend thought. Just as he turns to his friend to explain
that the nickel defensive package the Bruins showed on the last
play exposed the front line to a 20-yard draw play, she politely
corrects him, noting that a sixth defensive back meant UCLA was in
an even more vulnerable dime scheme. You go, girl.

“¢bull;The resourceful journalist. This mooching bottom-feeder
walks around the golf course, using the lame excuse of researching
for a tailgating column to swindle you out of your burgers
and”¦ oh, never mind.

“¢bull;The time warp. This is the fan who’s stuck in 1998
““ or 1988. There are two stages to this condition. The first,
more benign case, is an insistent, yet delusionary belief that for
some reason this is the year where the Bruins will somehow not
break their fans’ hearts as per the usual. The second, as of
yet clinically incurable case, is one where said fan, after seeing
Cory Paus throw an interception (which shockingly has yet to occur
this year), yells, “Damn it, McNown, you’re worthless!
Put Aikman in! Aikman, I say!” Good thing we have such a good
medical school.

“¢bull;The entrepreneur. This guy usually shows up after the
game and tries to take advantage of sun-drenched Rose Bowl patrons
with blatantly unsanctioned UCLA merchandise. How does one spot the
entrepreneur? His stack of $5 shirts proudly displays the logo of
the UCLA “Brewins,” along with a lazily reprinted
schedule from the 1997 season ““ the last time he worked out a
new shirt design.

If the United States is a melting pot, a UCLA football game is a
volatile stir fry, marinated with a curious combination of stale
beer, fine wine and a mutual passion for a game so trivial it
brings out the most unexpected ““ and the most embarrassing
““ in all of us.

Don’t be ashamed. Well, OK, be ashamed, but not for too
long. The day-long commitment to Bruin football at the Rose Bowl
involves much more than a game. For many of us, it is an escape,
whether it be from a rigorous courseload or a monotonous job, and
it is most certainly unlike any other spectacle in all of
sports.

So fire up your grill on the tee box of the 10th hole, tap that
box of wine on the fourth fairway and try your best not to pass out
in that sand trap. You’ve still got a game to watch.