As is the tradition now, college football opens on the Thursday before Labor Day Weekend. It started as a television showcase for a few teams several years back and has evolved into a bit of an unexplained phenomenon. By my count, 13 games were played last night despite not getting national television coverage. Somehow, Middle Tennessee State once again convinced a major team (Minnesota) to travel to Murfreesboro, but they couldn’t even get the stadium more than about half full. Either way, some fans still made it out to the array of college games and tailgated on a school night and we salute them.

I actually need to return this. I was trying to get an extra large chair.

For the first game in the school's history, Georgia State had a very impressive turnout of tailgaters

If Dr. Peter Venkman went to Iowa State, this would be his tailgating car.

I admire the hustle by these Ohio State fans, but setting up a TV for a Thursday game seems like overkill. Just talk about football. There's no real need to catch the 6pm Sportscenter

Sources: @gregfoster_sc, @ryancl, wildworld, @mdebarr

“Walk through an intown neighborhood this Saturday. There will be a hint of fall under the heat, and the sound of a television blaring out the sound of football, and the smell of someone cooking meat on a grill. If I could cut this smell up into lines and snort it, I would. As a drug it would have no rival, and as an aphrodesiac would have no equal.” – Spencer Hall

We’ve added a new page that has Numerical & Alphabetical Rosters for every team in the SEC. I went through each school’s media guide and trimmed it down to just the roster. They are in the .pdf format and can either be downloaded and printed, or loaded on your phone for when you’re tailgating or inside the stadium. The link for the rosters will stay in the right hand column of every page on the site. If this is something people like, we’ll do it for the other conferences as well.

Weather.com has a page that shows you the weather report for every college football game on Saturday. Which is mildly useful for the average tailgater who’s probably better off just checking the detailed local forecast. However it’s extremely interesting to the average gambler.

A salute to the combination of football, the autumn air, and the disorienting feeling of daytime drunkenness. May we all strive to perfect the tailgate.