Red State Revolution

In honor of our visitors from the so-called “flyover states” (and because no one else is around), the Times op-ed board extols the virtues of tailgating:

The proposal for a $1.4 billion Jets football stadium on the Far West Side of Manhattan has many flaws, which we’ve enumerated on other occasions. Now the Times sports columnist Dave Anderson has added another. The new stadium would offer mostly garage parking, and would thus interfere with a pastime that a lot of fans find more enjoyable than watching the Jets themselves: tailgating.

On two recent Sundays, Mr. Anderson toured the vast concrete parking lots surrounding Giants Stadium in New Jersey’s Meadowlands, and conducted an admittedly random and unscientific poll of about 150 tailgating fans.

The results were clear: 80 fans wanted to stay where they were, 55 would attend games at a stadium on Long Island or in Queens (like Shea, where the Jets once played, and where fans could keep tailgating). Only 15 preferred a stadium in the city.

Proximity to one’s home was a factor, but the most important reason to oppose the stadium plan was the feeling that a Manhattan stadium would not just trifle with the tailgating tradition, but pretty much destroy it. The Jets, who say they have conducted polls in which the “West Side came out on top,” insist that fans will be able to gather on the streets and at local bars and restaurants.

But that’s not tailgating. Tailgating is acres of S.U.V.’s and pickups, grills and trestle tables groaning under mounds of chicken and ribs and burgers, tents to keep out the rain and the cold, and R.V.’s to house the TV for watching another game.

“Your team can’t always be great,” Mr. Anderson quoted one fan as saying, “but the tailgating is.”