College Football Season!

My dad~ Dr. Ivan Mears in his early coaching years

My father played football for UCLA.  Never in a game.  He wasn’t quick and agile enough to actually make the intercollegiate team but he was on the practice team.  His love of football was so profound that he was willing to go out every day and be pummelled so that the players could practice competing.  There was no glory in what he did but they were some of his best memories.  He then went on to be a coach for a bazillion years at a couple of small colleges and then at the high school where he was one of the founding faculty.  After he retired, he could be found “reffing” for the local Pop Warner league.

Needless to say, football was really big in our house when I was growing up.  I had the UCLA “Sons of Westwood” fight song ingrained in my head even before I started working there and would hear the marching band rehearse on the quad down the hill from my office (sadly, I have USC’s “Fight On” song ingrained in there, too, but my father did earn his doctorate from there, so I guess it’s okay…in fact, one of my fondest memories was when I went to the UCLA-USC game with my father when he was a student at USC and we were sitting in the USC student section secretly cheering for UCLA).  In fact, I think I knew all football rules before the boys in my class understood them!

Since our small Christian high school didn’t have field lights, our home games were played on Saturdays.  We attended every game that was logistically possible.  My paternal grandparents did, too.  My grandfather would stand on the sidelines with my father as he coached while my grandmother watched the game from their camper that was parked on a street that overlooked the field.  Whenever we got hungry, or needed to get out of the hot sun, we would join her in the camper where she always had goodies for us–usually in the form of chili, hot dogs, chips, and dessert of some sort.  It was her form of providing a tailgate meal for us.

Photo courtesy of Picnics & Tailgate Parties cookbook by Sunset Books (1982)

“Tailgating” has become big business and, unfortunately, has morphed in many instances into a license for drunken debauchery.  But, it also provides a perfect venue for some retro pre-game fun.  Chili, dogs, chips, dessert and beverages–like my grandmother fed us–provides a low-stress simple meal.

As with everything that is retro, living a technicolor life is all in the details.  Don’t settle for the plastic geegaws masquerading as party supplies being sold at the local Target or Walmart. Use a real vintage stadium blanket for your tablecloth. Find some old school pennants to hang from the car’s antenna.  Go to the  NCAA College Football Fight Songs website and download all of your favorite fight songs to play in the background.  To really put the final touch on your party, use real dishes and utensils instead of paper and plastic.  I’ve seen melamine dinnerware at Target, KMart and online for reasonable prices.  Use these in the colors of your favorite team and you’ve immediately become classier than everybody else without worrying about breakage.

Ken over at Shorpy.com has created a wonderful video showing what football looked like before the forward pass was allowed (they could do a lateral/sideways pass or toss it to someone behind them but they couldn’t use the pass that so dominates modern football).  The photos and the videos also showed how closely football resembled rugby in its early days (note the leather helmets and limited padding).  I also loved seeing the refs in suits rather than the striped uniforms.  Those really were the “gridiron” days!

Click here to watch video on You Tube

(Hint: For full effect, click play and then enlarge the video to full screen by clicking the arrows icon in the corner of the player)

What are some of your retro-tailgating ideas or favorite football memories?

Oh, and go Bruins! Beat Kansas State!