Hell Yeah: Arizona State Wants To Create An Indoor Tailgating Location To Be Their "16th Hole Of The Waste Management"
The landscape of college football is truly the Wild West right now. If you want to stay competitive, then you need to have a shit ton of money. You need to have some kick ass facilities that rival some of the best in the NFL. You don't necessarily need to have an established winning culture at this very moment, but you need to at least seem like you're building towards one in the immediate future. Winning the conference, and a 2OT loss in the CFB playoff is definitely trending in the right direction for the Sun Devils.
Arizona State is checking off all those boxes with this one move. For starters, you get a new indoor practice facility. Considering what the hockey facility looks like down in Tempe, you'd imagine this new facility will be as state of the art as it gets.
But every time you see a school release photos of their new locker room and facilities, all everyone ever thinks about is how sick it must be for an athlete to go there. You see the photos and you spend the next few minutes thinking about all the different ways you'd spend your entire day in the building. And then you move on.
But Arizona State isn't going to forget about all the little guys out there. They're keeping the fans in mind. An indoor practice facility is all good and well on its own, but it becomes great once you turn that bitch into a state of the art tailgating center to rival the 16th hole at TPC Scottsdale.
Maybe I'm just out of the loop, but I don't think I've ever seen a college football team come out and embrace the idea of having the drunkest, most unhinged crowd in America. It's beautiful. It's literally what college football was invented for. The best thing about college football is that it's on Saturdays. You can get as shitfaced as you want, and you still have Sunday to deal with the consequences. The NFL forces you to make a decision--either you're going to have to drink responsibly like a nerd, you're going to have to call out of work on Monday, or you're going to have to be the most hungover person in the office the next morning at 8:47am. But college football was tailor made for tailgating. America was made for tailgating. And now Arizona State is made for tailgating.
It rules so hard. And I'm sure it'll add a little extra home field advantage every time ASU is playing at Mountain America Stadium. But more importantly, it'll add a shit ton of money to the NIL budget. I just looked up Skybox tickets for the 16th hole at Waste Management, and we're looking at at least a thousand dollars. Which makes sense to be a part of this scene.
I don't know how many people they plan to fit inside of this facility at Arizona State, but you figure they could at least make a couple hundred thousand dollars every home game. There's your new running back.
More money. Great facilities. Better atmosphere. All because a program is embracing the drunk fans who make Saturdays in the fall so special.