Tailgates, Ranked by What Actually Matters

A good tailgate has almost nothing to do with the game and everything to do with the food, the lot, and the people at the next truck over. Ranked honestly, kickoff comes in somewhere around fifth, and anyone who has spent a full Saturday in a parking lot knows it.

This is not a ranking of schools or stadiums. Plenty of people have argued about whether The Grove at Ole Miss beats a Saturday in Baton Rouge, and nobody has ever changed anyone's mind. This is a ranking of the things themselves. The parts of a tailgate, in order of how much they actually matter.

1. The food, and specifically whose food it is

Food is first and it is not close. But the ranking within the ranking matters: the best tailgate food is regional, and it is cooked by someone who has made it a hundred times, not someone trying it for an audience.

You can tell where you are in America by the smoke. Brats and beer in a Wisconsin lot. Jambalaya going in a pot the size of a kiddie pool outside Tiger Stadium. Boudin in south Louisiana before you even get to the jambalaya. Ribs and burnt ends in the lots around Arrowhead, where people show up at hours that would embarrass a bakery. Green chile on things in New Mexico that would not get green chile anywhere else. If the food at a tailgate could be served in any parking lot in the country, the tailgate is worse for it.

The other tell is the setup. A guy with one battered Weber kettle and a pair of tongs he has owned since the Clinton administration will outcook a trailer rig with a TV mounted on it, most days. Equipment is not the thing. Reps are the thing.

2. The lot itself

People underrate this. The physical ground you tailgate on shapes the whole day.

• Grass beats asphalt. Grass under trees beats everything. Asphalt in September is a griddle you are standing on.
• Shade is worth more than proximity. A shaded spot a fifteen-minute walk out beats a sunny spot at the gate, every time, in every state south of roughly Interstate 70.
• The exit matters at 4 p.m. The people who back in, park near an outlet, and know which service road dumps onto the highway are the same people every week. Learn from them or sit for an hour.
• A slight slope is a problem. Coolers slide. Folding tables become see-saws. Flat ground is a luxury you do not notice until you do not have it.

The best lots have a permanence to them. Same families in the same spots for years, painted lines or not. If you are new, do not take a spot that looks suspiciously open in an otherwise full row. It is not open. It belongs to someone who is running late.

3. The neighbors

A tailgate with great food and bad neighbors is a picnic. A tailgate with average food and great neighbors is a holiday.

The generosity in a good lot is real and it is specific. Someone will hand you a plate before they know your name. Someone will lend you the propane you forgot, and lighter fluid, and a bottle opener, and eventually a chair. There is an unwritten rule in most lots that if your smoker is going, you feed whoever wanders over, and the wanderers repay it in kind next week or next season. This system has no enforcement mechanism and it works better than most systems that do.

The dress code, such as it is, runs casual and a little bit funny. Team colors, sure, but the shirts that get comments are the ones with a joke on them. Something like the Cowboy Killer Tee will start more conversations at the next truck over than any jersey will. That is roughly the whole point of a tailgate shirt: give a stranger a reason to talk to you.

4. The weather and the calendar

Tailgating has seasons within the season, and they are not equal.

• Early September: hot everywhere, brutal in the South. Noon kickoffs in this stretch are an endurance event. Shade and water outrank everything.
• October: the good part. Cool mornings, warm afternoons, leaves turning in the Midwest and Northeast. If you only tailgate a few times a year, this is when to do it.
• November: the character-building part. Layers, chili instead of burgers, and the discovery that a fire in a steel drum makes you popular. Cold-weather lots in places like Green Bay treat this as the main event, not the price of admission.

Rain is a coin flip. A little rain thins the lot and improves it. A lot of rain turns grass lots into something you will be finding in your truck carpet through February.

5. The game

Fifth. Finally. The game matters, but mostly as a deadline that organizes the day. It tells you when to light the coals, when to start walking, when the lot will empty and refill.

The proof is the number of people at any big tailgate who never go inside. They have a TV on a generator, or a radio, or nothing at all, and they are having the best day of anyone within a half mile. There is a whole category of American leisure that consists of being near an event rather than at it, and the parking-lot lifer is its purest form. Our Off the Clock collection is more or less built for that person, the one whose Saturday plans are a lawn chair, a cooler, and a general direction to face.

6. Everything else, briefly

The remaining factors, in descending order of importance:

• Bathroom access. Should arguably be higher. A lot with real restrooms instead of a distant row of portable toilets is a better lot, full stop.
• Games. Cornhole is the standard and it earned it. Anything requiring more athleticism than an underhand toss is asking too much of the afternoon. The cornhole-and-a-cooler crowd overlaps heavily with the golf crowd, which is why something like The Off-Course Standard Tee fits both parking lots and clubhouses without changing anything.
• Music. At a volume where the next spot over can still hold a conversation. This is the entire rule.
• Decor. Flags on poles so people can find you. Beyond that, effort past a certain point starts to look like anxiety.

Common questions

What time should you show up to a tailgate?

Early enough that the coals are ready two hours before you want to eat, which usually means four to five hours before kickoff for a serious cook. If you are a guest rather than a host, showing up two to three hours out is polite. Bring something either way.

What should you bring to someone else's tailgate?

Ice, beer, or a side dish, in that order of universal usefulness. Ice is never unwelcome because it is always running out. Do not bring something that requires the host's grill space unless you have asked.

Is it fine to tailgate without a ticket to the game?

In most college lots and many NFL lots, yes, and plenty of regulars do exactly that every week. Check the specific stadium's parking rules, since a few require a ticket to enter the lots. Where it is allowed, the no-ticket tailgater is a respected tradition, not a loophole.