News

Vintage Tuscaloosa Crimson Tide mascot illustration
Game Day in Tuscaloosa: A Field Guide
In Tuscaloosa, 'Roll Tide' is a greeting, a farewell, a congratulations, a condolence, and a complete sentence. Game day here operates at the sport's highest sustained standard — the Walk... Read more...
Vintage Southern Cal Trojans mascot illustration
Game Day at the Coliseum: A Field Guide
Trojan game day happens in a building that has hosted two Olympics, a World Series, a Super Bowl, and a papal mass — and treats college football as its main... Read more...
Vintage South Bend Fighting Irish mascot illustration
Game Day in South Bend: A Field Guide
South Bend is a pilgrimage town. People who root for other teams still put a Notre Dame home game on their list, because no place in the sport carries more... Read more...
Vintage Raleigh Wolfpack mascot illustration
Game Day in Raleigh: A Field Guide
Raleigh's game day runs on a chip and a grill: NC State fans tailgate harder than anyone in the Triangle — the Carter-Finley lots are a legitimate barbecue event —... Read more...
Vintage Oxford Rebels mascot illustration
Game Day in Oxford: A Field Guide
Oxford doesn't tailgate; Oxford hosts. The Grove — ten oak-shaded acres in the middle of campus — fills with thousands of tents featuring chandeliers, floral arrangements, silver serving trays, and... Read more...
Vintage Norman Sooners mascot illustration
Game Day in Norman: A Field Guide
Norman on a football Saturday is a study in crimson commitment: the color starts at the stadium and radiates out until the whole town is wearing it, and the fight... Read more...
Vintage Minneapolis Golden Gophers mascot illustration
Game Day in Minneapolis: A Field Guide
Minnesota plays its football right in the city — Huntington Bank Stadium sits on the Minneapolis campus with the skyline in view — and a Gopher game day has a... Read more...
Vintage Madison Badgers mascot illustration
Game Day in Madison: A Field Guide
Madison is an isthmus city — the capitol and the campus squeezed between two lakes — and on game day the entire strip between them turns cardinal red. The tailgates... Read more...
Vintage Los Angeles Bruins mascot illustration
Game Day in Westwood: A Field Guide
UCLA's game day comes with a commute and a payoff: the campus is in Westwood, but home games are twenty-six miles away at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena — which... Read more...
Vintage Lincoln Cornhuskers mascot illustration
Game Day in Lincoln: A Field Guide
On home Saturdays, Memorial Stadium becomes the third-largest city in Nebraska — bigger than everything in the state except Omaha and Lincoln itself. Every seat has been sold for every... Read more...
Vintage Lexington Wildcats mascot illustration
Game Day in Lexington: A Field Guide
Lexington is horse country first, basketball country second, and football country on a rolling twelve-Saturday lease — but don't let the ordering fool you. Big Blue Nation shows up for... Read more...
Vintage Lawrence Jayhawks mascot illustration
Game Day in Lawrence: A Field Guide
Lawrence sits on a hill above the Kansas River, prettier than the state's flatland reputation suggests, and its game day has a particular charm: this is a basketball cathedral town... Read more...
Vintage Knoxville Volunteers mascot illustration
Game Day in Knoxville: A Field Guide
Knoxville is the only town in America where a meaningful percentage of the crowd arrives by boat. The Vol Navy — hundreds of vessels rafted together on the Tennessee River... Read more...
Vintage Happy Valley Nittany Lions mascot illustration
Game Day in Happy Valley: A Field Guide
Happy Valley isn't on the way to anywhere — that's the point. State College sits in a bowl of central Pennsylvania mountains, hours from every major city, and on football... Read more...
Vintage Gainesville Gators mascot illustration
Game Day in Gainesville: A Field Guide
Gainesville in September is a physical experience: the heat sits on the town like a wet towel, and 90,000 people voluntarily gather in it to scream for four hours. The... Read more...
Vintage Fort Worth Horned Frogs mascot illustration
Game Day in Fort Worth: A Field Guide
Fort Worth is the big city that still moves like a cow town, and TCU game day fits it perfectly: close-in, neighborly, and dressed head to toe in a purple... Read more...
Vintage Fort Collins Rams mascot illustration
Game Day in Fort Collins: A Field Guide
Fort Collins is the craft-beer capital of Colorado with a football habit, and its game day reflects both facts in the correct proportions. The town rolls green and gold down... Read more...
Vintage Fayetteville Razorbacks mascot illustration
Game Day in Fayetteville: A Field Guide
Fayetteville sits up in the Ozarks, and on game day the hills themselves seem to go red. The whole state funnels into one town — Arkansas has no pro teams,... Read more...
Vintage Eugene Ducks mascot illustration
Game Day in Eugene: A Field Guide
Eugene game day starts with a walk: fans cross the Willamette River on footbridges through the trees, thousands of people in green and yellow filtering through a forest to a... Read more...
Vintage Durham Blue Devils mascot illustration
Game Day in Durham: A Field Guide
Durham game days run on charm instead of scale, and it works. Duke's Gothic campus looks like someone dropped Oxford into a North Carolina pine forest, Wallace Wade Stadium sits... Read more...
Vintage Columbus Buckeyes mascot illustration
Game Day in Columbus: A Field Guide
Columbus is the biggest city in America that fully stops for college football. Two million people, and on a fall Saturday the entire metro reorganizes itself around a horseshoe-shaped stadium... Read more...
Vintage College Station Aggies mascot illustration
Game Day in College Station: A Field Guide
College Station doesn't do game day the way other towns do, because Texas A&M doesn't do anything the way other schools do. Everything here is a tradition, the traditions have... Read more...
Vintage Clemson Tigers mascot illustration
Game Day in Clemson: A Field Guide
Clemson is what happens when a town of seventeen thousand decides to host eighty thousand people a dozen times a year and gets extremely good at it. Everything orange within... Read more...
Vintage Chapel Hill Tar Heels mascot illustration
Game Day in Chapel Hill: A Field Guide
Chapel Hill is a basketball town that keeps a very nice football Saturday on the side, and honestly that's part of the charm: Kenan Stadium is ringed by pine trees,... Read more...
Vintage Boulder Buffaloes mascot illustration
Game Day in Boulder: A Field Guide
Boulder's stadium has the best backdrop in college football and it isn't particularly close: the Flatirons shoot out of the ground just past the west rim of Folsom Field, and... Read more...
Vintage Baton Rouge Tigers mascot illustration
Game Day in Baton Rouge: A Field Guide
Nobody tailgates like Baton Rouge. Not close. Show up to an LSU home game and you will be fed jambalaya, boudin, gumbo, and cracklins by strangers who will be offended... Read more...
Vintage Austin Longhorns mascot illustration
Game Day in Austin: A Field Guide
Austin will tell you it's not like the rest of Texas, and then a hundred thousand people will put on the exact same shade of burnt orange and walk to... Read more...
Vintage Auburn Tigers mascot illustration
Game Day in Auburn: A Field Guide
Auburn calls itself the loveliest village on the Plains, and on a football Saturday the village part is literal: the whole town fits around the campus, the campus fits around... Read more...
Vintage Athens Bulldogs mascot illustration
Game Day in Athens: A Field Guide
Athens on a football Saturday is the strongest argument that a town of 130,000 can out-loud a city of millions. The tailgates start on North Campus under oaks older than... Read more...
Vintage Ann Arbor Wolverines mascot illustration
Game Day in Ann Arbor: A Field Guide
There are college towns that host football games, and then there is Ann Arbor, where on seven or eight Saturdays a year the town itself becomes the pregame. By 8... Read more...
The LSU Tigers: A Mascot History
The story behind Mike the Tiger and how Baton Rouge ended up with the most iconic live mascot in college football. Read more...
The Michigan Wolverine: A Mascot History
How a school nicknamed the Wolverines ended up with a mascot no one's actually seen in Michigan since the 1800s. Read more...