Tailgaters crowd West Virginia venues

by Joe Arnold
Staff Writer

The Ohio football team's trip to Morgantown W.Va. Sept. 8 gave the Bobcats a chance to play a Big East team at a Big East venue. The crowd of Ohio fans that made the hour and a half trip to "Touchdown City, USA," received a lesson in Tailgating 101.

In the parking lots surrounding Mountaineer Stadium, adults and kids flung footballs and mingled, taking part in the tailgating ceremony synonymous with West Virginia football.

"Tailgating has been very popular since the new stadium was built in 1980," Gary McPhereson said. "It is a big tradition and a big social event for everyone associated with Mountaineers football. It's kind of a ritual."

McPhereson is Director of the Mountaineer Athletic Club and Senior Director of Athletic Development at West Virginia. In addition to his athletic booster position, McPhereson spent 22 years as coach of the Mountaineers basketball team and is a witness to the growth of tailgating at West Virginia.

"There is a tremendous interest and pride in tailgating here at West Virginia," he said. "The parking lots around the stadium are full for practically every game. It's not uncommon for our tailgaters to start at 9 a.m. and continue well after the game. If a game ends at 3:00, it's not uncommon for people to be tailgating at 6 or 7 in the evening."

Down the road in Huntington, W.Va., tailgating and tremendous fan support is nothing new to the Marshall football program, coach Bob Pruett said.

"We've got great fan support," he said. "The Marshall-OU game has great fans. Tailgating creates rivalries, and that's important. Tailgating is all a part of the appeal and pageantry of college football. It creates an atmosphere of a big-time program."

Marshall, winner of the Mid-American Conference's Motor City Bowl the past three seasons, is notorious for bringing fans to games. The Thundering Herd played the past four MAC Championship games in Marshall University Stadium and filled each of the 30,000 seats.

Sam Stanley, Assistant Vice President of Alumni Relations at Marshall, said tailgating has a history in Morgantown.

"It all started in a small field next to Fairfield Stadium in the early 1980s," he said. "Now, with the new stadium, we have tailgating that occurs a half a mile from the stadium on gameday."

Pruett said the MAC's agreement with the GMAC Bowl to Marshall's ability to fill the stands.

"I think the reason the MAC got the Mobile (GMAC) Bowl is the great fans that we've brought to bowl games," he said.  "We took 12 to14,000 people to Florida and Michigan State in the past two years."

Tailgating not only boosts spirit, it also boosts the Huntington economy, Pruett said.

"Every afternoon game brings in $2.5 million to our economy, and they say that every dollar spent on a Marshall football game turns over seven times," he said.

Stanley said Thundering Herd fans are the standard-bearers when it comes to fan support in the MAC.

"This town is completely supportive of Marshall," he said. "It's their team, and tailgating is just the thing to do down here. We probably support our team more than any other team in the conference."