4. While the elegance is emphasized at Ole Miss, other SEC schools’ fans also use gameday as an event for which to spiff up and look their best. This tweet from LSU focuses on presumably undergraduate fans preparing for the game, and all are dressed formally. This photo, unlike the previous ones, is less concerned with the landscape of tailgating than the people who construct and participate in the experience. For this tweeter, the important aspect of gameday is not necessarily the competition, the food, the clothes, or the tradition (though some or all of those are certainly connoted); rather, it is the friendship, community, and relationships engendered in the midst of the ritual that matter.
For college students, home gamedays often serve as respites from schoolwork. Notice the cup that is partially visible in the right of the frame. The red solo cup is a US cultural icon for parties and tailgates, and it is frequently referenced in works of popular culture like Toby Keith’s 2011 song, “Red Solo Cup.” Research finds that alcohol consumption increases on college football game days at the home campus (Menaker & Chaney 2014). Though a majority of undergraduates are under the legal drinking age in the United States (21), alcohol, often found in disposable plastic cups like this one, is usually included in students’ weekend tailgates with friends. This tweeter is expressing her fandom by emphasizing friendship and more subtly including alcohol.

5. In researching the American college town, geographer Blake Gumprecht (2008) found that Greek life dominates formal aspects of student life on college campuses. This is apparent at SEC tailgates and football games. Fraternity and sorority members often congregate with other members of their organization to participate in the many gameday activities. Unlike their peers’ more informal friendly gatherings, Greeks usually brand themselves not only with their team’s logo but with their organization’s letters as well. This display of community membership is a point of pride, distinctiveness, exclusivity and honor for members.
In this tweet, a new sister of Chi Omega at Mississippi State emphasizes her sorority’s button as a focal point of her gameday experience. The tweeter is her father who is also proudly wearing Chi-O letters on his shirt along with the Mississippi State logo. Tradition is a popularly lauded ideal in the Southern gameday rituals, and both Greek organizations and familial ties are a part of that tradition. The commonly used saying of “Faith, Family, Football” is meant to indicate the traditions of these rituals. This father is evoking the family and football tradition by sharing with the world his observance of the ritual with his daughter. He also emphasizes his daughter’s acceptance into a new family: a sorority. Greek organizations often use familial diction in defining members’ roles. And, if an inductee’s blood relative was also once a sorority or fraternity member, they can sometimes even inherit membership into that Greek organization. This father is clearly pleased with both his daughter’s observance of the tailgating tradition of gameday with him and the infusion of sorority membership into the ritual.

6. This next tweet is also evocative of the tradition of tailgating with family: the tweeter expresses his pleasure at his reunion with his cousin at the 2018 Florida vs Georgia game. This annual matchup played on a neutral site in Jacksonville, FL is colloquially known as the “World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party,” and it is certainly possible the cup-holding Gators fans are participating in this tradition. The tweeter shared this image perhaps not just for the family connection but also for the eccentric, colorful Florida getup his cousin was donning. This speaks to an extremely common occurrence at a college football gameday: the material commodification of fandom. Sports merchandise purchasing and displaying reflects the consumer’s values and serves to emphasize his/her fandom (Lee et al. 2011). The tweeter’s cousin paid money for each item in his extensive blue-and-orange outfit so he could then display his fandom. This tweet was probably sent in part because this outfit expresses “more” fandom than the average tailgater’s does. However, the merchandise consumerism culture is not reserved for exceptional displays of fan values like this suit; also visible in this picture are Gator branded bins, cornhole boards, a chair, a tent, and even a grill. Entire economic enterprises are predicated on the popular positive correlation between merchandise consumerism and fandom, and this is reflected across cultural and gameday landscapes.
It is also worth noting that this tweeter tagged @YallLifestyle in this tweet. Further examination of that account’s website reveals that the tweeter is actually the co-founder of the company, Y’all Lifestyle. The online store markets its products by appealing to an essentially Southern way of life. The website explains that the “y’all lifestyle” is about:

Football fandom via tailgating and game-going is integrated into a vision of a Southern lifestyle that is itself a marketing strategy: those who ascribe to this vision of southern living are being encouraged to purchase from this company that shares the ideal.

7. This tweet reemphasizes the integration of tradition and tailgating. It refers to the Mississippi State custom of opening up its most coveted tailgating spot, The Junction, in an Oklahoma land rush-esque fashion where fans sprint to claim their plot. In Starkville, Mississippi, this pregame activity itself is a competition. Even as fans prepare to view a football contest later in the day, they will first compete for space where they can participate in the tailgating ritual. The “gaze” (Urry 2002) of the camera is focused on the fans’ anticipation, but it also shows the empty, coveted space. Why is this space so valuable? Perhaps because of the excellent proximity to the Davis Wade Stadium.
But also the tradition itself serves to elevate the value of this space in the tailgaters’ minds. The tradition of rushing The Junction is part of gameday for Mississippi State fans, one that, as a fellow fan noted in a direct reply tweet, never gets old. The rushing ritual along with other tailgating processes are themselves placemaking activities. Here, The Junction, formerly empty, grassy space, is made into a place infused with meaning by those who are lucky enough to stake their claim.

8. Several themes already explored appear in this tweet about the University of Tennessee: the tweeter and his wife (who is tagged in the tweet) are seen in their orange and smoky gray getup in preparation for the Vols’ season opener in 2018. Rather than a picture of the couple at an iconic pregame tradition in Knoxville like the Vol Navy or the band’s “playing to The Hill” performance outside Neyland Stadium, they are photographed in front of a backdrop of the Tennessee football team’s traditional entrance onto the field: running through the "T." The vantage point of the backdrop allows the couple to simulate actively participating inside this tradition that fans usually experience with a more passive voyeurism. It is unclear if this picture was taken on the day this tweet was sent, but if it was, it was shot in Charlotte, North Carolina, where Tennessee played in a neutral-site game. In this case, this backdrop serves as a way to infuse the very place-based gameday traditions of Knoxville, Tennessee, into the unclaimed no-man’s-land of Charlotte, North Carolina.
Prominently making an appearance in this tweet is Smokey, Tennessee’s live blue tick hound mascot. Mascots are icons that are frequently included in the festival of gameday; several SEC schools have dog mascots, and LSU even has a live tiger, Mike. Mascots are revered by their fans even as they are misunderstood by outsiders (see Parks & Recreation‘s satire of this). Often, a team’s nickname and mascot are related (the Georgia Bulldogs’ mascot is an actual bulldog), but this is not always the case (The Alabama Crimson Tide’s mascot is an elephant). Mascots can be represented in artificial human costumes or by live animals. Regardless, they are not static sideline ornaments but can be very powerful icons evocative of a school’s history or its fans’ collective memory. Some mascots can be extremely controversial (Bever 2011), but they can also inspire a great deal of pride. Smokey is seen in this tweet as an icon of Tennessee football, and the tweeter and his wife’s proximity to the hound serves to elevate their fandom in the eyes of his followers.

9. This tweet from an LSU fan shows a local spin on the Southern tailgating tradition. Some elements remain the same: the branding of the self and automobile with team logo merchandise and the self-beautification efforts, for instance. There is also an integration of Louisiana and specifically New Orleans culture into this scene. The étouffée referenced on the alliteration sign refers to the dish commonly eaten in Louisiana, the state of both LSU and New Orleans. The elephant meat in this theoretical étouffée refers to the opponent Alabama’s elephant mascot, Big Al. This sign is meant to evoke images of hunting and dominating a lesser prey; in so doing, it glorifies the violence of college football as a sport.
Notice also that the girls holding the sign are sitting up on the convertible as if it were a float, and one is even wearing gold beads. This is evocative of Mardi Gras and the many parades that occur annually in New Orleans. Mardi Gras and other Carnival celebrations around the world are cultural rituals in their own right (Turner 1969). This picture was before the 2012 National Championship in New Orleans. Through text on a poster board and parading through the streets, these fans are signing to Alabama that this territory belongs to LSU. These fans claim the Louisiana city as their own by couching LSU traditions (a rivalry with Alabama) with those of New Orleans (particular foods and rituals) into a larger Louisiana flavor of tailgating. This is not a unique, isolated occurrence for LSU; the hashtag in this tweet (#GeauxTigers) shows support for the LSU team in the widely used, more Louisiana-French phonetic way of spelling “go.” State borders are particularly important in constructing fandoms geographically in college football (Roseman & Shelley 1988), and the combining of LSU tailgating rituals with New Orleans culinary and Mardi Gras rituals shows a particular perceived ownership of Louisiana by the LSU fanbase.

10. Many fans experience college football in places away from the stadium, and this is no less significant than those tourists who attend the game in person (Roseman & Shelley 1988). It is unclear if this tweeter and her daughter featured in the image will attend the Alabama game later in the day, but the background of the picture appears to be a house, and the daughter in the foreground is outside in the yard area. Themes of family appear again in this tweet. The featured toddler has no real agency of her own to decide what, if any, college football team she would support. Here, the mother is actively passing down her Alabama fandom to her daughter in hopes that she will continue the tradition of cheering for the Crimson Tide. Just as with other merchandise sales, this tweeter has purchased a trademarked item to express her own fandom, but in this instance, she intends for her daughter to be the expresser. That is, the mother creates a character of her daughter as an Alabama fan. However, this creation and narration actually expresses her own fandom. In all likelihood, the toddler is not smiling because she realizes that the Alabama team is playing a football game that day, but her mother interprets it as such to her followers. In so doing, she expresses her own fandom as an Alabama supporter and demonstrates that she is committed to the Faith-Family-Football pillars that are tent poles to the SEC fan community and culture.

11. This Twitter user appropriates her dog’s existence to express her football fandom much like the mother in the last tweet did with her daughter. This dog, Jeffrey, is being used as a prop to express his owner’s excitement for Florida football. The owner purchased an officially licensed Florida collar and jersey for Jeffrey and pretends that his facing the television demonstrates a similar anticipation for the upcoming contest to her own. This is a clear example of anthropomorphism, a phenomenon by which people ascribe human traits and characteristics to nonhuman agents (Epley et al. 2013). And while this fan tweets this cute anthropomorphic scene to connect with other football fans, Jeff himself probably doesn’t care much whether the team in jerseys similar to his own wins or not.
Beyond the utilization of a pet to express one’s own fandom, this tweet shows a gameday experience away from the stadium. Instead of tailgating, this tweeter has chosen to watch the game from the comfort of her own home. The television looks adequately big enough with a high enough definition to allow for an optimal viewing experience, one that many fans choose. These remote fans can use media and television to construct virtual spaces of belonging that still allow them to feel the game and perform their fandom even in their state of diaspora (Baker 2018). Jeffery, probably a usual character around the home, helps this tweeter perform her fandom even as she is excited for the game to happen where she is not (the Swamp, Florida’s football stadium).

12. This is an example of an expression of fandom that directly conflates football fandom with larger contested regional cultures. This anonymous account by the pseudonym “OneSouthernMan,” proclaims himself in his Twitter bio a “Connoisseur of Everything Southern” including food, Southern belles, guns, politics, and SEC football. It is telling that his perception of Southern-ness includes college, specifically SEC, football. This tweet’s textual content contains the language of SEC football, but the image tells a much different story. The photo shows a collection of pamphlets, the left on icons of the Confederacy and the right on Christianity. The Lost Cause ideology in the South, evocative of the defeated Confederacy and its Antebellum predecessor, is a powerful, active, and potent mindset in the region today. This misremembered, white-supremacist collective memory is often emotionally connected to the icons of the Confederacy’s flag and heroic generals (Bohland 2013), all of which are prominently displayed in these pamphlets. The placement of religious pamphlets beside the confederate ones and the invocation of God in the tweet represent the extent to which the Lost Cause as a part of a “white southern identity is tightly bound with the regional population’s fundamentalist religious practices” (Webster & Leib 2016, 32). The South is indeed often thought of as the “Bible Belt” of conservative evangelical Christianity (Brunn et al. 2011), though the right-hand pamphlets in the photo are not explicitly conservative or evangelical in nature. Specifically, the tweeter asks God to bless “#Dixie.” Dixie is a term evocative of the old Confederate south that is highly charged, radicalized, and strongly identified with in Alabama (Alderman & Beavers 1999, Cooper & Knotts 2017).
This tweet’s text also uses the hashtag #RollTide, the favorite saying of Alabama fans. It even tags Alabama’s official football account in the tweet. College football, specifically Alabama football, was on OneSouthernMan’s mind when he sent this tweet. Why the coupling of Alabama football, Confederate iconography and verbiage, and images of Christianity? Perhaps it is simply Eldridge, Alabama’s proximity to The University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. However, since OneSouthernMan is an account dedicated to the expression of a decidedly white male Southern identity, this tweeter believes that the Confederacy, Christianity, and Crimson Tide are natural components of this identity. This tweet seems subtle enough, but it serves as an example of how “electronic mass media is partly responsible for making the idea of a distinctive South a social reality” (Alderman & Good 1997, 21) and how that distinctiveness can push an agenda of exclusivity. This tweet is also indicative of the depths to which SEC football is entrenched in and intertwined with one such idea of a distinctive southern identity, and it calls into question just what and for whom that southern-ness is.

13. As previously mentioned in the cases of Southern Living and Belk, there exist corporate actors apart from the individual fan that have recognized the importance of football fandom in the lives of SEC supporters and seek to capitalize on this fandom. Merchandise, specifically clothing, dominates most university bookstores and unofficial fan shops. Other industries have realized this marketing potential. Johnsonville sausage has a deal with the Southeastern Conference to be the official sausage brand of the league. This seems like an unnatural alliance on the surface: besides frankfurters being sold at sports events traditionally, there is nothing particularly tying link sausage to SEC football. Johnsonville was founded and is headquartered in Wisconsin, far from any state hosting an SEC institution. The sausage company though sees that attaching the SEC brand to its product and advertising it at its games will more fully open up a market in the southern US. Other SEC sponsors attempt similar strategies. This tweet shows Alabama and Tennessee fans alike lining up on a rainy third Saturday in October to buy the official sausage of the SEC that is somehow “made the Knoxville way.”

14. This next tweet returns to the tailgating fields, this time in Lexington, Kentucky. This tweeter is eager to show off his newly constructed custom banner for his tailgate tent. He also establishes his proximity to the stadium where the game would later that night be played. He includes the Georgia equipment truck in his shot to go along with his highly antagonistic diction in his tweet.
The picture of the stadium is of particular interest because it shows both top-down and bottom-up corporate sponsorship. The University of Kentucky’s stadium was named “Commonwealth Stadium” for many years, but recently, Kroger purchased the naming rights to the field and facility. The new “Kroger Field” name is prominently displayed on the side of the stadium imposing and inscribing a toponymic name change onto the landscape. This is not insignificant; place naming actively allocates meanings to places, orders the ways in which people interact with their environment, and facilitates identity construction (Alderman 2015). Kroger, a Cincinnati, Ohio-based Fortune 500 corporation, is attempting to strengthen its connection to the state of Kentucky through this top-down sponsorship technique. Kroger hopes to create a positive, place-based connotation for its brand in the minds of Wildcats fans so they will hopefully become loyal grocery shoppers.
Anheuser-Busch on the other hand is attempting to drum up business using a similar appeal but with a bottom-up approach. The tweeter is displaying his “Dilly Dilly Y’all” beer koozie. “Dilly Dilly” is a recent Bud Light marketing slogan, but this is amended to appeal to Kentucky fans. The state outline of Kentucky is mapped onto the koozie, showing the beer company’s attempt to create a linkage between the beer and the state. Bud Light assumes, based on the university’s official colors on the koozie, a connection between state identity and Kentucky Wildcats fandom. Furthermore, “Dilly Dilly” becomes “Dilly Dilly Y’all,” giving a southern spin to the corporate trademark. Using this southernism further connects a state that has a complicated history with vernacular southern identity to its Southeastern Conference region. These koozies are cheap to make and can be distributed to masses of fans rather than investing in one logo/name display as Kroger did with the Wildcats’ field. This strategy is clearly working for this tweeter; he intentionally holds up his beer can to show his consumption during his tailgating along with his place identity.

15. Marketing football fandom is not only done through corporate actions, however. This tweet is from a local clothing store in Athens, Georgia, and it reminds those lady Georgia Bulldog fans of the expectation for women to look their nicest on gamedays. This tweet contains a countdown of anticipation like the first tweet, but this is less about excitement and more about conforming to a social expectation.
The local business evokes language and images of Georgia fandom: spelling “dogs” as “Dawgs” and referring to Samford Stadium by is commonly used name, “between the hedges.” The model in the shot wears red and has black hair. And, like many fans we’ve seen in these tweets, she is white. Probably not coincidentally, red, black, and white are Georgia’s three colors.
Substantial research suggests that American football is connected in myriad ways to masculinity (Steinfeldt et. al 2011). This tweet however, unlike others, has been directed towards the feminine fan. A mere glance at a stadium or tailgate on gameday would show that college football fans are not exclusively men. This local store understands this fact and uses the expectation of women to dress nicely in Athens when going to Georgia football games to market its clothing. While it is not unusual for men to wear coats, ties, or other nice garb to a game, the popular imaginary associates the nice dress at Southern football games primarily with women (see this CNN article). The dress featured in this tweet could be perfectly appealing to customers out of context with no connection to Georgia football at all. However, this store markets it using football as a social tool to create and recreate the expectations that drives its business in a college town (Gumprecht 2008).

16. These tweets show a different type of marketing with college football. In preparation for the 2018 gubernatorial and US senate elections in Tennessee, then-candidates Marsha Blackburn and Bill Lee visited Knoxville for the Vol’s best-attended football game of 2018 (Cooper 2020): the SEC home opener against rival Florida. The two Republican candidates campaigned together by meeting fans and documenting their tailgating on social media. Both candidates were marketing themselves as worthy governing officials by appealing to the average citizen. College football attendance and tailgating is seen as a popular activity and is, in this case, connected to a state-funded public institution. Both candidates appear to be interacting with orange-wearing Tennessee fans in a very common way with the message that they are not so different from any other Tennessean. Their campaign Twitter accounts use verbiage that a fan might use like “#GBO” (for “go Big Orange”) and the traditional kickoff refrain of “It’s Football Time in Tennessee.” Just as corporations and local stores seek to connect their business and products to the tradition of football, these candidates are using football as a marketing appeal to a popular fandom for their own benefit. Moreover, this photo visually represents an intersection of political power with the geographic space of a public campus. Public higher education campus landscapes have been theorized as arenas for contesting power and social issues (Brasher et al. 2017, Luke & Heynen 2019). The campaigning shown in these tweets represents an active participation of politicians in the public campus arena by wielding football fandom in the hopes of increasing political power.