Baylor University has introduced its own version of “sailgating” alongside McLane Stadium on the Brazos River.
For its first college football game on a scorching Sunday afternoon in Waco, vessels ranging from speedboats to inflatable rafts docked along the stadium’s east side, many flying flags in Baylor colors.
The 30 to 40 boats didn’t match the volume of the University of Tennessee’s Volunteer Navy. In Knoxville, it’s not unusual to see a flotilla of 200 boats tied up on the Tennessee River next to Neyland Stadium. Nor did it size up to some of the smaller yachts crowding Husky Harbor in Seattle, where the University of Washington’s Husky Stadium sits alongside Lake Washington.
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Baylor developed boat slips that sold for $3,000 apiece for the season.
Photo by: DON MURET / STAFF
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But those stadiums opened in 1921 and ’20, respectively, and fans have built the offshore game-day experience over decades.
At Baylor, school officials are taking it slow to do it right and develop their own tradition. (Note for accuracy: There wasn’t one sailboat to be found; pontoons mostly ruled the river).
After visiting Tennessee to check out its setup, Baylor built its own facility on a small harbor adjacent to the stadium. It developed 18 boat slips linked to a boardwalk leading out to those spaces. Sixteen slips sold for $3,000 apiece for the season to members of the Bear Foundation, the school’s fundraising group. The other two slips are reserved for Baylor’s use.
More than 100 people were initially interested in buying a slip, and the school picked the top 16 based on the foundation’s donor point system. Baylor plans to add more slips next season and can expand to 70 depending on demand, Athletic Director Ian McCaw said.
The slips open at 8 a.m. on game days and close a few hours after the game, said Nick Joos, Baylor’s executive associate athletic director for external affairs.
The fees will help pay for the $1 million it cost to build the dock facility, McCaw said. Separately, the school received a six-figure gift from a donor to name the slips. Baylor gave the donor some options to name the facility and is waiting to hear on his decision, he said.
Baylor is also working on a separate philanthropic deal to name the harbor itself where the slips are situated but no agreement has been signed, Joos said.
Outside of the school’s dock, there is plenty of room along a flood wall for boaters to moor their rigs, and it’s first come, first served for those spaces.
“It’s a little bit of an unknown, trying to figure out how many boats will be out there on game day,” said Brian Nicholson, Baylor’s associate vice president of facilities, planning and construction.
For the first game, there was room to breathe on the Brazos. A few sailgaters jumped in the muddy water, drinking cans of beer. Others slowly maneuvered their boats around the inlet to take in the new scene.
A few larger pontoons opted to stay along the main river’s course running by the stadium as they hung out and observed the unveiling of a statue honoring Robert Griffin III, the former Baylor quarterback and winner of the 2011 Heisman Trophy.
School officials point to Griffin and the arrival of coach Art Briles after the 2007 season as the turning point for getting a new stadium built.
Three seasons ago, Griffin’s last-second touchdown pass to beat Oklahoma and a postseason victory in the Alamo Bowl got the ball rolling for raising private dollars to build the facility, McCaw said.
After the Bears shocked the Sooners, Nicholson sent a text message to his boss: “That pass just cost us $250 million,” the estimate for building a stadium that ended up costing $266 million. “From that point on,” Nicholson said, “this thing took off and the momentum was just unbelievable. We did it.”
