Friday Night Tailgate visits Bloomington

Before the IU football team was handed a 42-29 loss to Michigan State on Saturday, IU fans were able to enjoy a little extra popularity in Bloomington when the Big Ten Network came to visit.

The station broadcast its show, “Friday Night Tailgate,” live from the Sample Gates between 8:30 and 10 p.m. Rather than dissect the Hoosiers’ chances against the Spartans, the premise of the show is to have a little bit more fun with the school it visits.

“It’s not your football x’s and o’s show,” said Big Ten Network anchor Mike Hall. “It’s a chance to highlight everything that makes a football weekend great from outside the football field.”

During the week, on-site correspondents toured Bloomington and taped several segments that aired Friday night. The show visited the IU nightlife, went over the city in hot air balloons and hosted a cup-stacking tournament.

The idea of the show is to promote a contest between all of the schools in the Big Ten. Following the end of the football season, the Big Ten Network will designate one school as having the best atmosphere. Last year, Illinois won the inaugural Tailgate Championship Trophy.

“We had a little ceremony with a representative of the University,” Hall said. “We gave them an award like it was the BCS title, but it was the TCS title, so it was pretty good.”

Though the show was taped live and in a popular area of town, few people turned out to be a part of the program.

For those who did turn out, what they saw was comedic performances involving the on-site correspondents and the IU cheerleaders.

“We’re ready to come here and cheer our hearts out and go back and watch it,” freshman Holtzman Cartwright said. “I would have liked to have had some more moral support from the IU fans, but I’m totally fine with just me and my friends being here.”

Cartwright and his friends also came out to support one of their friends who is an IU cheerleader as well, said sophomore Duke Biber.

“We’ve been waiting for this for about a week,” Biber said. “It was real exciting.”

Biber said the lack of a crowd does not reflect the quality of the Big Ten Network. He and most of his friends said they enjoy watching the channel and are glad that it is now available on most major cable providers.

“I think they’re doing definitely a better job than they did last year,” Biber said. “Getting all of the sports on there and having the equal broadcasting – I think they’re doing a great job. It’s so good that I can finally get the channel. It’s awesome.”

While Cartwright and Biber planned to come out to watch the live taping, Highland, Mich., resident Ron Shell happened upon the show accidentally.

For Shell, Bloomington was the latest stop on a tour of Big Ten stadiums he has gone on during the past few years. As a Michigan State fan, all of the games he has gone to are when the Spartans play away.

But seeing the show helped make the trip that much more fun.

“It’s not quite ESPN,” Shell said. “But I think that’s a nice idea that they come to various Big Ten schools and hang out for a week.”