Very Belated Announcement

​My deepest apologies for how late this announcement is, but we have a couple of tailgaters that have decided to go ahead and take the plunge, committing themselves to spending the remainder of their days together in sickness and in health, whether it be a Rose Bowl season or an Insight.com Bowl season, 'til death by alcohol do they part.

Being inappropriately groped in the above picture by yours truly is Michelle, affectionately known around the tailgate as "Tailgate Girl." She has been a fixture of the tailgate since we recruited her out of section 30 as a freshman. Her appearances were scattered throughout her college career as she managed her own UMTailgate spinoff at our rainout location.

Prior to last season, she finished her education, and appeared at the golf course in a full time capacity. At her side was her longtime boyfriend Kevin, who divides his time between earning multiple engineering bachelor's, master's, and doctorate degrees (now all completed...congrats!) and building Michigan themed grills in a machine shop. He became my right hand man for the 2007 season, a tailgate sous-chef if you will, and I wouldn't have made it through the season without him.

Just a few weeks ago, Kevin popped the question, which is of course, "Will you marry mego to all of the Michigan games with me?" Tailgate Girl accepted, and Kevin will take her last name...the couple will become Dr. and Mrs. Tailgate Girl.

Congrats to them both!

Who's in on a Suite?

​Varsity Blue has published a brochure that details what it takes from a cash perspective to get your name on a piece of the new stadium. You can get it on a concourse. You can put it on a lobby. You can even put it on the President's suite...or the Athletic director's suite. Wait a sec. They both get suites? They can't share a suite?

We've come a long way from a $50 brick. Slapping your John Hancock on the stadium is going to run you anywhere from $5K to $2.5 Million.

But there are some deals to be had here folks...namely the suites. If you go low end, a suite is $55,000 and includes seating for 16. That's $3437.50 per season, per seat. But bear with me here folks. 80% of that is tax deductible. With some crafty gorilla math, and depending on your tax bracket, you're looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of $1700-$1900 per season ticket....which is not that far from the $350-$400 plus $500 seat license you might already be paying. Basically, for twice the price, you can have a suite. But as Varsity Blue points out, there is one huge caveat: Despite premium food and beverage service in the suites...alcohol is not permitted or served.

Doh!

Section 30 is looking more and more comfortable everyday. There might not be as much room...there might not be as much glamor...but there is certainly more spirit...

...and there's usually someone serving alcohol.

Weekend Roundup, Dodging Bullets Edition: June 1, 2008

• Utah, who is our first opponent in the RichRod era, already has a non-conference schedule set for 2013. Meanwhile, we don't know who we are playing next year.


• Two high school dropouts, obviously fed up with waiting around for the Big Ten Network, hacked Comcast's website. What did you accomplish this week?


• Columbus, Ohio is a hotspot for the budget traveller! The writer says that the following five words alone are worth a trip to Columbus: salty, caramel-almond ice cream. How about these five words... Columbus is full of pedophiles.


• Time for you to catch up on basketball recruiting. Why? Because Michigan baseball and softball have been eliminated.


• It's never too early to start increasing your tolerance for the upcoming season. Beer.


• Everything you wanted to know about Kevin Porter, Hobey Baker award winner. His favorite actor is Nicolas Cage, and his favorite actress is Angelina Jolie. That means the pinnacle of his existence is the movie "Gone In 60 Seconds," though he doesn't list it as a favorite.

Welcome to the 90's, UMTailgate.com

Oh, now this is exciting. Nothing new if you've seen pretty much every other blog in the blogosphere, but UMTailgate.com has upgraded to the 1990's version, allowing for YouTube embedding. The upgrade had an expected side effect however, which was the corrupting of the message board. No problem, as I had plans to eliminate that anyway. The comment section of each post should be used in its place for you regular posters. I am looking to port over your old avatars...for those that had them. Much much much more to come a.k.a. "we can rebuild it, we have the technology."

UMTailgate.com Going Under the Knife

​Right now, somewhere out in cyberspace, UMTailgate.com is getting updated.

I'm going to try to underpromise and overdeliver. I am hoping that I will be able to keep things intact as I upgrade to a newer version of the content management software (wordpress). My good god...I do not want to have to redo the pictures....again. But it needs to be updated, and we could use a fresh cover page theme, so we'll see how it goes.

I am also considering dropping the message board in favor of commenting being done on the post pages. Again, we'll see.

Gunning for a Memorial Day weekend to make the finishing touches, so barring any massive breakdown the once again all new UMTailgate.com should be live on Tuesday, May 27th. But I do plan on posting in the interim...so don't abandon us just yet.