Professional tailgating at Lambeau

Published 11:16 am Friday, September 2, 2016

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">MILWAUKEE — This is what makes college football great.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">LSU and Wisconsin presumably will play a football game Saturday.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But that’s not important now.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">There surely will be a final score, eventually.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Maybe it will require overtime, perhaps some derring do that will live on in one of the school’s legend and lore for the ages.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Who knows? That’s — what? — why they play the games.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But it almost seems secondary.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Oh, there’s the Leonard Fournette season debut, a high-profile opponent for the Tigers star to stake an early Heisman Trophy claim.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Everyone seems to wish him good luck, except Wisconsin, of course, with the Badgers thinking they may have a plan to deter him. And good for them.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">More importantly, perhaps, for LSU at least, there will finally be the chance for you to see, with your own eyes, whether the new and improved, more mature and take-charge Brandon Harris at quarterback is fact or equal parts hearsay and wishful thinking.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">There’s also an intriguing subplot with LSU having stolen Wisconsin’s prize defensive coordinator, Dave Aranda, and apparently there are some bruised egos about that up here.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Wisconsin has some issues of its own, enough to surprisingly leave the Badgers unranked (barely) in preseason polls despite coming off a Holiday Bowl victory over Southern Cal.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">That didn’t take any of the luster off this game.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But whatever effect Saturday’s Lambeau Showdown may eventually hav</span><span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">e on, say, the College Football Playoff rankings, will work itself out in due time.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Not to minimize it.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But there may be far more at stake here.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The football teams will do some sort of battle in a bucket-list historic venue that neither of them has ever played in.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The fans, it seems — both sets — just want to make sure the bars are open early enough to properly prepare (hydrate) for a 2:30 p.m. kickoff.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">For all the hype and buildup of the chance to play at Lambeau, intended or not, this whole extravaganza has turned into an epic clash of proud cultures between two tailgating powerhouses.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The Milwaukee airport Thursday was awash in purple and gold, seemingly with an LSU pep rally threatening to break out on moment’s notice.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Tigers fans seemed to have baggage claim to themselves, though it remained the calm before the storm.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">That won’t last.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">By Saturday morning they will be in enemy territory in Green Bay, though it all seems friendly enough as the anticipation builds toward Lambeau Field being the epicenter of perhaps the greatest head-to-head tailgating battle college football has ever seen.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Lambeau is the perfect arena.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Resident Packers fans, many of whom are presumably partial to the Badgers, basically perfected NFL-style tailgating.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">No NFL venue can compare when it comes to pregame socializing. It’s Lambeau … and everybody else.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">You wonder why ESPN’s GameDay chose this game even though others have both teams ranked?</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The show specializes in pregame, and there will be no better place to be Saturday on what otherwise is being promoted as best opening weekend of GAMES in college history.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">GameDay is outside the gates.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">That may be the place to be Saturday morning.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The legendary stadium left nothing to chance.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Green Bay didn’t rest on the laurels of the Packers. The city went to great pains to beef up its already formidable tailgate section for the two titans.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The centerpiece will be a beer garden. Go figure.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">There was a report running through the airport, relayed from the lone Badger fan I saw, who had heard tell from a buddy that there’d been a sighting of a pickup truck pulling a purple-and-gold smoker grill “the size of an RV.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">So both schools are bringing their A games.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">I envision a “Star Wars”-style laser fight, with long chunks of boudin dueling gargantuan bratwurst in a battle to the bloated end.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Bratwurst, I learned Thursday, comes in a Cajun flavor, though I would be skeptical.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The holy trinity of Wisconsin cuisine is allegedly sauerkraut, mustard and something known only as secret sauce.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The same informant, a guy at my hotel named George, who otherwise spoke on condition of anonymity, also told me that “Some of that stuff I’ve heard you people down there eat scares me … but I’ve heard it’s quite tasty.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">I countered by asking him about this “cheese curds” thing, hoping it was better than it sounds. I was at least encouraged to learn that it’s available deep fried.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But the lines are drawn.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">There will the finest gumbo, for sure, fighting alongside jambalaya for LSU’s honor against the likes of beer-cheese soup and a kitchen-sink concoction called booyah.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">And food is just the half of it, of course.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Dan Wolken, USA Today’s college football writer, basically threw down the gauntlet the other day when he tweeted:</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“The only fan base that would even have a prayer of out-drinking LSU is Wisconsin. What a bonanza for the bars.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Meanwhile, kickoff inches closer.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It may be anticlimactic.</span>