Basketball Tailgating

EDIT: Sorry for posting this early, I had to rush off to a meeting and "save" means post as I found out.

Like many of you, I'm unfortunately a fan of Virginia Tech basketball. It's only less painful that being a Virginia Tech football fan because the expectations aren't as high. But not every Hokie is a fan of Virginia Tech basketball because our team hasn't made going to the games a mandatory experience.

Because of the mass exodus from the North Endzone last week against Marshall, I've thought a lot about the give and take between fans and sports. Fans want to show up to watch a good team but recruits don't want to come to a place without good fans. Obviously the easiest way to overcome this obstacle is with the Frank Beamer method of being a good coach. The verdict is still out on James Johnson; he started the year strong but inherited a team without much talent. He has a couple of good recruits signed up but they're still a year away. So odds are this year's team is just not going to be very good.

That said, I think there may be a way to overcome the aforementioned obstacle by getting the fans to care about Hokie basketball before the team is actually good. From the fans who yelled back at me when I yelled at them for leaving the football game early, most of them were going to go back to their tailgates. They want to be in the stadium for Enter Sandman, get the experience and then enjoy more of the delicious food and drink they had before the game. While I wholeheartedly disagree with this idea, it gave me the idea that maybe we should start tailgating basketball games.

Obviously there are negatives to this idea which is why no school in the country does this. The weather is worse, a lot of the games are in the middle of the week and it costs more money. I'll tackle these one by one.

First: the weather. Instead of thinking about all of the snow, cold and wind that will obviously come with a basketball tailgate, I think about it like this. Would people not tailgate if one of our November home games was played in a snowstorm? It may deter some but I would think a lot of people would actually love it for the experience. When schools give out seats to students on a first-come-first-serve basis, do you think those students care if there's a snowstorm? See my answer above. Plus, it's not like it's going to snowstorm every time there's a game

Second: weekday games. This, to me, is the biggest obstacle to overcome. It's simply not reasonable for Hokies to come down to Blacksburg and tailgate on a weekday, right Jim Weaver? So rather than fight it, let's just start off tailgating weekend games. Once people see other people starting to tailgate, I'm inclined to believe that they'll follow along.

Third: money. Welp. There's no way around this issue either but, again, if this thing were really going to get going, people will pay for the experience. However, we would need a few Hokies with a little extra money to get the ball rolling.

If anyone is going to accept this idea, it'll be the TKP community so give me your comments, concerns and thoughts!