Who are we?
We are a bunch of die-hard Gator fans that get up at obscene hours in the morning on game days to tailgate before games. Some of us are students, some are graduates, and others of us are just Gator fans, but we are all part of the Gator Nation. We all have a couple things in common: We love the Gators, we love a fun party, and we love to eat good food. What is the best way to put all those three things together? Gator Tailgating!
Where did the idea of a website based on Gator Tailgating come from and why?
Our tailgating group was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana for a big showdown with the LSU Tigers. It was about 9 am and there was nowhere to park near Gator fans and that was the few we could actually find. After parking in some French-man’s yard about 6 blocks off the main road and being surrounded by Tiger fans, we knew there had to be a better way to plan a road trip.
On I-10 riding back from Baton Rouge, Daniel brought up the conversation of a tailgating website. With the website, we could plan with other Gators where to meet for away games to tailgate together, talk in the forums about breaking Gator news, and even get new ideas from other tailgaters. After the conversation, we decided that if it wasn’t done already it had to be done by us. We ended up buying the GatorTailgating.com domain the day after we got back from that trip. The rest is history.
Where can you find us?
Many of the people on this site tailgate individually, and you can find them by seeing our map of tailgating locations (link). As for the originators of the site, we tailgate on Gale Lemerand (formerly North-South Drive) just south of the intersection with Museum road in front of the Parking Garage. (See Google Map below) It would be hard to miss our banner, tents, and flags right beside the road.
Javascript is required to view this map.
Who’s invited?
Everyone is invited to attend our tailgate parties. We openly invite anyone who wants to join us for a good time. That means even your mother-in-law can come party with us. Also, if you’re an out-of-towner from the opposing school, we’d love for you to stop by for a visit. We won’t give you too much hell about not wearing orange and blue either….unless you’re a Seminole. We just ask that you let us know you’re coming ahead of time so we can plan for the right amount of food.
Do we make road trips?
Are you kidding?!? That’s one of the original reasons why we started this site! We try to make 2 or 3 trips per year. If you’re interested in meeting up with us for any away game tailgate parties, post in the tailgating forums and we will let you know who’s going and what we can do to meet up. Trust me…you won’t be sorry you did.
How do we pay for the parties?
We pay for our tailgating parties a couple of different ways, but mostly through our own pockets. We do accept donations to help keep our parties going strong though. Donations go toward the buying of food and supplies that we use on a weekly basis during the football season. We also sell GT.com t-shirts and koozies (link coming soon!) that help pay for the previously mentioned costs too. On the website, we have a couple advertisers that pay to keep the site online and updated.
How can you help GatorTailgating.com?
- Donate – This isn’t just money. You can donate/share almost anything. If you have a special tailgating dish you like to cook, bring it to the party and let us try it. If you have some paper plates and plastic cups, you can donate them for us to use at future tailgate parties. Obviously, the easiest thing to do is donate money because we can buy what we need for the next week, but don’t feel that is the only thing.
- Contribute to the website! - Create an Account! Post in our Forums! Upload Pictures! Upload Videos!
- Support our Sponsors – We have sponsors on our website that pay to keep our website updated and online. Please support these sponsors by visiting their establishments / websites and let them know where you heard about them at!
- Tailgate – The best thing you can do to help GT.com is tailgate and tell your fellow tailgaters about our site. We want all of Gator Nation to know about GatorTailgating.com
