5 Tailgate Foods for Frigid Fall Football

Source: iStockPhoto

It’s no secret that football fans are willing to sacrifice and suffer to support their favorite teams. They fight the sweltering heat during the first half of the season and endure the icy blast of winter as the season comes to a close. As games get more important, tailgating and bleacher-sitting gets more unbearable—oftentimes because you’ve inadvertently become a human icicle.

Luckily, we’ve compiled a short list of tailgate recipes for cold weather that will boost your spirits while you wallow in your truck bed waiting for kickoff. Here’s a countdown of our five must-have foods for tackling tailgating in the frozen tundra:

5. Tuna Salad Sandwiches

Firing up a charcoal grill can be incredibly difficult in cold conditions, so it’s important to come prepared with a backup, premade meal that don’t require heat. For a fast and filling meal, bring tuna salad to your tailgate. Grab a few tuna cans, mayo, apples, onions and celery. Dice up the ingredients, mix them all together and enjoy! The best aspect of this tailgate option is its convenience—a batch of tuna salad sandwiches can be whipped up in mere minutes!

4. Chili Queso Dip

No tailgate, regardless of weather, is complete without chips and dip. We suggest adding some Southwestern spice to your tailgate with this fantastic chili queso cheese dip. A chip’s perfect companion, this queso dip will melt in your mouth and provide you with a little extra meat for fuel.

3. Breakfast Tacos

This is a great option for tailgaters who are brave enough to bring out their grills and are looking for energy before a chilly morning game. To get started, whip up some scrambled eggs in a skillet and toast a package of tortillas. Bring a variety of pre-cut toppings in baggies and let the whole tailgate customize their tacos! A huge plus to this option is the taco’s portability. You can move amongst tailgates at will with the contents of your taco wrapped securely in a tortilla!

When you set up, keep in mind the position of your grill relative to the wind—you don’t want your smoke to bother neighboring tailgates.

2. Frito Pie

Heat up your crockpot and take your tailgate to a whole new level with some delicious Frito pie. This family favorite is easy to make—simply cook ground beef alongside beans and tomatoes on the stove or in a crockpot. For the finishing touch, add cheese and some delicious Frito corn chips! Check out our favorite Frito chili pie recipe here.

1. Chicken Soup

Chicken soup is the go-to winter weather food for moms everywhere—you can’t go wrong. Grab a large, family-size thermos and store your piping hot, pre-prepared soup safely inside. Our favorite chicken soup recipe is easily better than the Campbell’s variety and includes onions and celery.

Don’t worry about having to eat tepid soup at your tailgate—most thermoses trap in warmth for five to seven hours.

These foods will help make chilly pre-game parties more enjoyable! Comment below with your favorite cold weather tailgating foods!

5 of the Most Popular Color Schemes in Sports

A team’s color scheme has a lot of intention behind it. From which color is more prominent to how all the colors are displayed, it all conveys a brand and a swagger that sports teams and brands take very seriously. You can most likely rattle off a slew of teams just by looking at a combination of colors, but do you know why those teams chose the colors they did? Here’s a little history lesson on some of the most popular color schemes in sports today.

1 - Every sports team in the city of Pittsburgh wears a combination of black and yellow. It makes for a very cool effect when sports fans can wear any team’s apparel to any sporting event, but why the uniformity across all sports? The flag of the city is actually colored black and gold, so the decision seemed pretty easy for sports team owners.

2 - The University of Michigan doesn’t wear your run-of-the-mill navy and yellow. They trot out all of their sports teams in maize and blue. History says the blue started popping up on graduation diploma ribbons in 1859, but the color combination wasn’t officially adopted until 1867. The exact shade of each color wasn’t chosen until a few decades later, but that distinctly rich yellow is what sets this color scheme apart from the rest.

Then...
Photo credit: NFL.com

...and now
Photo credit: seahawks.com

3 - The Seattle Seahawks have become one of the most popular football teams of the last few years, combining speed with hard-hitting defense and flashy uniforms to create a style all their own. Back when the team joined the NFL in 1976, their colors were more traditional with a royal blue and kelly green combination which was based on Northwestern Native American tribal art. Since then, they’ve modified their colors to a navy blue and neon green. Interestingly, all of the current Seattle sports franchises have some variation of green and blue, making the city the closest competitor to Pittsburgh in terms of color uniformity across all sports.

4 - Ohio State wears what is officially referred to as scarlet and gray for all of their sports uniforms. The color red is bold and assertive, just like Ohio State is when they’re competing. There’s actually not much of an anecdote behind why they chose these colors. The story says that three students in a lecture room chose the colors in 1878 because they were a pleasing color combination that hadn’t been used by any other college at the time. The unique combo has stayed unique all these years!

Photo credit: remembertheABA.com

5 - The San Antonio Spurs and their familiar black, silver and white color scheme started out as a red, white and blue-clad team called the Dallas Chapparals in the ABA. The color scheme made sense given the state flag of Texas and strong Texas pride among its citizens, but once the ABA merged with the NBA, relocation and a name change was in order. Some speculate that silver was introduced to replicate the look of actual boot spurs. Regardless of the exact reasons why, the Spurs and their simple, unique color scheme have carved a nice little home for themselves in NBA history.

6 - For fun, we’ll throw in a sixth. Ever wondered how the New York Mets got their orange and blue color scheme? When the Mets began play in 1962, they were one of MLB’s first expansion teams and acted as a city replacement for the relocated Giants and Dodgers. To that end, the powers that be decided their uniforms and colors should represent all of the New York City franchises that had come before them. They borrowed orange from the Giants, blue from the Dodgers and pinstripes from the Yankees.

What are some of your favorite color combinations? Let us know in the comments below!