Big 10 Football Tour

A rainy Sunday in Milwaukee has us reflecting on our 4th stadium, Ryan Field in Evanston, IL (Northwestern).  It was amazingly therapeutic to have a weekend where we didn't have to travel too far from home and to get to sleep in our own beds for a weekend night.

Our blog on Minneapolis is NOW POSTED!  We hope you'll find this to be one of our more entertaing recaps.  We hope to have our Northwestern recap posted later this week and then we are on to visit another Illinois school, this time the fighting Illini.  Once again, we'll have NINE members coming to the game with us.

This weekend we learned more than ever how challenging it is to simulataneously please 4-10 people on any given weekend.  Some members want to stay out while some want to turn in.  Some want to see the sights while others want to stay at the game or the tailgate.  It is very very challenging to keep all members content at the same time.

When we started this tour, we intended to seeing all of the sights at each school/city.  4 weeks in, we're beginning to realize what a challenge that is.  First of all, after working 60 hours a week, planning for the tour, and spending at least one LONG day a weekend tailgating/going to football games/etc, we all generally want to get home as fast as possible on Sundays to rest, update the blog, and plan the subsequent visits.  Oh yeah, we still have to pay bills, do laundry, fix our cars, and other simple tasks that everyone NOT touring the Big Ten has to do.

Anyways, we'll keep pushing on and hope you'll enjoy following us on this blog and on Twitter!  Please contact us with any feedback you may have.  Thanks for following us!

We're back from one heck of a weekend in Minneapolis!  We received a private tour of TCF Bank stadium and competed in some Man Vs Food challenges.  Check back Sunday for a recap of our visit!

In the meantime, the post on Michigan State is live!  Check out our review of the game in East Lansing!

Next up is Northwestern, which thank god is less than 2 hours away from Milwaukee.  We'll be arriving in Evanston, IL early on Saturday morning, and we'd like to meet some Wildcat fans!  Get in touch with us to stop by the tailgate & potentially be featured on our site!

If you know anyone with access to tickets at Illinois, Iowa, Purdue, Michigan, or Wisconsin, please please please let us know because that is proving to be our largest expense and our biggest challenge to overcome on a weekly basis.

A couple of reminders:

1) Big 10 Tour shirts are still available!  Please help us offset some costs by purchasing one via our Merchandise link.

2) TailgateToss.com is offering followers of the Big Ten tour 25% off all licensed bean bag/ladder golf/tailgate pong games.  Learn how to redeem your discount HERE or just enter coupon code "bigten" at checkout.

3)  Don't forget to follow our interesting weekly tweets at BIG10Drew on Twitter!

We're off to the Twin Cities at 7 AM on Friday.  It's said to be a beautiful weekend in the high 70's/low 80's.  We're doing a tour of TCF Bank stadium on Friday afternoon and tailgating at the crack of dawn with some of the notable Minnesota fans, &wearing our Brew's Crew tshirts...well as long as we don't spend the whole weekend shopping at the Mall of America.

Unfortunately Minnesota won't get to meet Blake or Wes on this trip.  Blake is covering for Drew at work and working on his music career after finding this great new guitar in Michigan.  It's unfortunate that we won't have Blake this weekend because he's our best photographer & the good conscience of the group!

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Wes is missing this weekend's trip because he's driving up to Green Bay to see the Packers play some other National Football League opponent.

Last weekend, we had Adrienne Bryl join us for Michigan State and this weekend our unofficial 6th member will be Dan Lins.  Dan will be flying in from Phoenix.  Dan has never been to a Big Ten school, but did attend the Rose Bowl last year.  Damn, we are ameteurs!

Next week will feature the debut of Dan Lawrence at the Northwestern game, where we'll once again see Minnesota play football; this time in Evanston, IL.   Be sure to follow us on Twitter (Big10Drew) and call us if you're in the Cities this weekend.

Please enjoy the BIG BEN Beef Jerky as you read through this post.  We couldn't believe it when we saw it at the Penn State Creamery. 

We are BACK from another successful weekend at Michigan State. The MSU staff showed us on heck of a time and we made some great new friends in East Lansing.

After a significant delay, our post on Penn State is live!!!  Unfortunately we didn't have the time available to us to put as much effort into the blog as we'd like, but when you're traveling for 11 straight weekends while holding down a full time job (& coming down w/ illness in the case of this week) it's more than tough.

Later this week, we'll be inducting the Penn State front office into our Hall of SHAME.  We'll also be adding those who helped us in Penn State and the Michigan State front office into the Hall of FAME.

We're currently in the midst of planning what we intend will be one of the best weekends when we travel to Minneapolis & see the brand spankin' new TCF Bank stadium this weekend.

Our apologies for the delay everyone.  Upon returning from Penn State, Drew came down with the Swine Flu and hasn't been able to pull himself out of bed all week.  We had an unreal experience at Penn State and are currently getting things together for our 6 hour trip to East Lansing, MI tommorrow.  We'll see the Michigan State Spartans in action.  Plan on seeing both Penn State and Michigan State updates posted late next Thursday night (9/18/09).  It was a short week due to the Labor Day holiday and Penn State being so far from Milwaukee, so we've struggled to flatten out the details of our next few stops.

Make sure to follow us on Twitter, username "Big10Drew" as we'll be posting comments from the road such as "Oh my god, we lost Wes again!" or "We've actually spotted an Akron Zip fan!"

Welcome to our followers from Brazil, Ukraine (Seinfeld "The Ukraine is weak!"), Romania, Hungary, and holy cow...Iraq! Egypt, Nigeria, and the Phillipines as well.

As far as the US, Pennsylvania still leads the league in visits, but Wisconsin and Michigan are close behind!

Well our August has vanished and while we can't say that we're really prepared, our BIG TEN tour unravels today.  We'll be leaving Milwaukee tonight and heading for Baltimore, MD.  Why Baltimore, MD?  Because Pennsylvania airfare rates are rediculous!   The assumption is that we'll head to York/Harrisburg, PA tonight and then onward to State College on Friday. 

We're shattered our goal of 10,000 web site visits before the season has even begun.  We've been visited by 6 continents (no luck w/ Antarctica), 21 countries, and 45 of he 50 states.  Louisiana, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, & Vermont are the only states that we haven't seen visits from.

If you're in State College this weekrend, give us a call at the numbers listed on our CONTACT US page.