This weekend had the potential to be great for football fans at Duke-our Blue Devils were playing a Football Championship Subdivision team and our former point guard was making his debut at quarterback. Unfortunately, neither Duke nor Greg Paulus could pull out a victory, but whether you watched both games, only one or never made it out of the Blue Zone, there was plenty to get excited about.

We may have lost to Richmond, but I'm still excited for Duke football season because of what I saw this weekend-not just on the field, but in the stands. I saw a stadium packed with passionate fans in blue and white, a far cry from the half-empty stands that were the norm three years ago (or worse, the unavoidable flood of orange and purple when Clemson came to town).

Even in the student section, the majority of the fans were wearing our school colors. At most colleges, this wouldn't be a noteworthy observation, but at Duke we have a little tradition called Tailgate that tends to have a slightly different dress code (and overall code of conduct) than your typical tailgating party.

If you wandered into the first Blue Zone lot some three hours before the game, you might expect the student section to have as much neon green and hot pink as blue and white. We were spared that sight because most of the eccentrically dressed students have no intention of ever attending the game. For many students, Tailgate is just a theme party without a theme-through the course of the day, I encountered a group of people wearing swimming pool inflatables, a girl in a cocktail dress made out of a trash bag and a guy in a banana suit.

I have to admit-I've never really been a huge fan of Tailgate. I always thought it was more of a distraction from the game, the opposite of what a tailgate traditionally is. I know that I could be an exception. I should add that I've probably spent more time in Koskinen Stadium and Jack Coombs Field than in Perkins and Bostock libraries in my Duke career. I take being a Blue Devil pretty seriously.

At the same time, I think it's hard to deny that there is something about Tailgate that is undeniably cool. Take your average campus section party and replace the dimly lit, crowded hallways with a wide-open parking lot in the glorious Carolina sunshine. Now multiply by 10, because every group on campus is attending the same party, side by side. Like a mini-LDOC every other weekend, Tailgate brings the student body together in a truly unique atmosphere.

The administration has been trying to figure out for years how best to address that "atmosphere" and the problems associated with it. Reactions have ranged from prohibitionary (eliminating kegs in 2002, forced evacuation of the lot at gametime in 2005) to accepting (serving food in 2007, reallowing cars in 2009) to Wizard of Oz-like ("play games on the quad and pay no attention to the party behind the curtain" in 2008). Students approach the annual rule adjustments with a paranoia that someone is trying to kill their precious Tailgate, but year after year the party in the Blue Zone has continued in a similarly rowdy vein.

It has been apparent for years that Tailgate's relationship to Duke Football exists only on the calendar, but the contrast has become sharper now that fans are actually attending the games. A funny thing has happened in the Cutcliffe Era-the football team is finally receiving the support they deserve, but the costumes at Tailgate are not getting any less outrageous.

It's only been in the past 15 years (since Duke Football's last winning season) our proper-noun Tailgate has developed, growing out of a group of out-of-season athletes tailgating a little harder as the games got less enjoyable. But the increased optimism surrounding the football program has not changed the face of Tailgate. The party and the game now coexist, separate but equal entertainment options for your Saturday. Some students attend both, some attend one or the other and some were at the Freewater Star Trek movie marathon.

There's a part of me that wishes that people would at least wear Duke colors at Tailgate, to try to maintain appearances that the festivities are somehow tied to the game that day. The crazy costumes would actually be clever if you incorporated Duke blue and demonstrated how spirited you are instead of just how ridiculous. But to be perfectly honest, so long as I have company in the student section, it doesn't really matter to me what the Tailgate revelers wear.

But to those who keep their focus on the festivities, I just want to say you're missing a heck of a game.

Bradford Colbert is a Trinity senior. His column runs every other Monday.