Gameday in Athens lost its luster today with the announcement of new rules concerning tailgating for the 2010 football season.
http://gamedaygameplan.com/gameday2010
North Campus, home to a good majority of Georgia fans (including Bubba 'N Earl), has essentially been eliminated as a tailgate spot begin this fall. If the trash was really the issue, they could have implemented a few simple rules to help make sure things were cleaned up. Instead, the University took the extreme approach. What's next? Are they going to turn all of campus into a family free, no alcohol zone?!?!?
Tailgating is a gameday tradition and is one of the reasons football in the South is something special. Ole Miss would never think about shutting down The Grove, but UGA essentially just shut down the closest thing we had. I know people were upset about the trash, but to all those people who threw a fit, I hope you're happy.
5 comments:
This is a truly sad day in UGA football! Damn this!
Wait a minute. So the people who got upset because another group trashed North Campus are to blame? Not the people who actually decided to make the place look like a war zone?
I understand the University could have done more to provide sufficient trash receptacles and are to blame in this as well but please don't try and tell me that the actual fans tailgating on North Campus should have the majority of the blame for this. I may not agree with the solution Adams has come up with but it doesn't mean the "punishment" wasn't well deserved.
I'm outraged. Outraged.
They made a half-hearted attempt last year to change things on N Campus in mid-stream. They wanted this to happen.
Boot Adams
I'm not talking about the general person who was upset. Hell, I think we were all upset. I'm talking about the crazy people (AJC, other media) that made an insane deal about trash. The more media coverage an issue gets, the more pressure there is to take extreme measures.
Like I said, you can't imagine Ole Miss ever shutting down the Grove. They seem to be able to keep things under control with tents, tables, grills, and every other essential tailgate item. Why the University felt the need to kill North campus tailgating as opposed to reaching out for suggestions and trying a new plan I feel is a direct result of the media coverage.
This is a lot of outrage over crap. As long as there is a football game, I will be there. Yes, I love to tailgate and it's well documented. But now I have to go somewhere else to do it, and if I can't tailgate at all, I'm still there for my Dawg Football. In all seriousness, this is a combination of things. The trash was ungodly. Someone else's fault or not, the restrictions are there and folks have to get over it. Even if you cleaned your trash up, like the B'NE crew did, we were still responsible because there is no way to differentiate who leaves trash or not. When I started tailgating on NC, we were given trash bags and told to bag it and leave it, it would be picked up for us. As time went on, no trash was picked up and there was so much of a mob scene, no one could get in and out to move it. The Administration never provided the infrastructure or resources to fix the issues and let it fester to the point where they can now control access almost completely. It also doesn't help that scavengers go through the trash, I've seen it and if you use common sense, why would someone leave a ripped open trash bag laying around their tailgate with garbage thrown everywhere. The bigger issue is that too many people were using NC in it's recent heyday. These new regulations won't solve the issue, it just moves the issue and it scares me that at the end of this, there will be no on-campus place to Tailgate.
Last point, I lived in Hill as a Freshman, and it was just as bad as NC. North Campus is just the head of decades of other locations being damaged. In the end, wherever you move as a fan and no matter who's fault it is, remember this lesson. If the Meyers Quad gets trashed, which it will, this will happen there.
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