The Black-Out Game

It’s not fall unless there’s football. And it’s not football unless it’s college football: specifically, Rutgers University college football. As a student of a school without a football team, there’s nothing I love more than getting together with my friends and watching a great football game. The Rutgers “Black Out” game is definitely more about the experience prior to the game than the actual game itself—pre-gaming, tail-gating, whatever you want to call it. If you’re a young adult living in America, you probably know what this entails. I’ve been to a couple of Rutgers’ games before, but never the infamous Black-Out game, which lives up to its name in more ways than one.

The morning of the game, we headed to a tail-gate at Delta Beta something or other donned out in all black clothing. We walked into the backyard which featured a DJ, pong table, tons of frat bros, and girls wearing black Rutgers shirts that had been altered so drastically I think they deserve to be denoted a whole entire new category of clothing. A few fireball shots and a couple beer bongs later, I started to feel like I fit in a little better. This year’s annual Black Out game had a 3:00 pm start time rather than 1:00 pm, conveniently allowing its college student attendees to get more belligerently drunk than usual. Once we were all nice and rowdy we stuffed onto a bus and made our way to the stadium.

When attending a Black Out game, prepare to find yourself caught in angry mobs at many points throughout the day. Whether you’re in a sweaty basement trying to make your way to the keg, or in line at the stadium elbowing your way through drunk and hungry college students to get a basket of chicken fingers and fries, I suggest wearing sneakers. Toes will be crushed.

Also, unless you want to literally black out at the game, pace yourself. I can probably speak for at least 60% of the crowd that day when saying by the time I actually got to the game I might as well have been watching pee-wee football. I don’t think I watched one play, let alone even saw the field. But nevertheless I did enjoy myself, cheering with the crowd like I was a season ticket holder, screaming out Rutgers’ chants and witnessing students get into physical debacles as they cut each other in line for food.

Next thing I knew, I woke up from a nap at 7:00 pm, and it took me a minute to figure out what day it even was…only to come to find that all of us who left the game missed one of the greatest comebacks Rutgers will probably have all season. We left during the third quarter when the score was Rutgers 7, Arkansas 24. Rutgers wound up coming back in the fourth quarter and took the victory with Rutgers 28, Arkansas 24 as the final score. Damn you, Fireball.

I slowly made my ways downstairs to the kitchen to find everyone already pre-gaming, again, to go out for the night. So, if you plan to attend a Rutgers’ football Black Out game in the near future, make sure you wear your drinking pants. After an intense tail-gate followed by cheering like a die-hard fan, you’re going to want to call it a night. But that’s not an option. Take a quick power nap, swallow a couple Advil, take a shower and get yourself together, because you’re going to be partying whether you like it or not.