Alright, Tucson is an unappealing town. It’s in the middle of the desert, the nice parts of town seem to be on the outskirts, there’s nothing that exciting downtown, and there’s only about a block and a half worth of places to go right next to campus. The block and a half (University) is nice, with good food choices and popular bars, but after that, it’s mostly run down within a couple miles of campus.

The campus is fine - it’s clean, relatively modern, and people around the university seemed happy and busy. There’s nothing really to the campus, though. It’s brick buildings, grass, and palm trees. There, if you can picture those three things on a large compound, you’ve got the Arizona campus.

As far as gameday, though, people were genuinely excited to be drinking, grilling, and being around Arizona football (despite the season). The tailgaters know the team is beat-up and near the bottom of the conference, but nobody seemed to let that get in their way of a good time on a hot day. The tailgate is on grass, which is a positive, mainly because tailgating on asphalt in the desert is not so fun on the sweat glands.

More so than any other school, Arizona fans were overly generous with their alcohol and food (the Red Army and Clinic guys especially), and I got offered water bottles by six or seven tailgates as they saw me tired and sweaty carrying around my stuff up and down the tailgating area. Arizona fans are generally enthusiastic, talkative, and completely non-confrontational. So yeah, Tucson is hot, the team isn’t that good, the people are as good as any set of fans I’ve been with, and uh, the girls are always a plus at any Arizona school. Good genes in the desert, I suppose. Enjoy the episode.