The college football season is in full swing and that means it's time to start planning your game day party! Whether you're cheering on your alma mater or just rooting for the home team, these six ideas will help you throw the ultimate college football party.
Decorate with Your Team's Colors
Whether you're hanging streamers or banners, dressing up the food table or setting out plates and napkins, make sure your décor reflects your team spirit. This is an easy and inexpensive way to show your guests which team you're rooting for.
They make pretty much anything with team logos, names, or colors on them, and now is the time to really show all the crazy team stuff you've collected over the years. Get some giant flags to hang outside your house, or even hang them up on your wall inside like a poster. Throw pillow with your team's logo on it? Put them out, everyone sits on a team pillow today! Giant inflatable mascot in the front lawn? Absolutely yes.
The more creative, and the more crazy you can make it with your team gear, the more fun you're likely to have. It's all about going overboard with your support on game day.
Set Up a DIY Photo Booth
No party is complete without a photo booth! Set up a space with props like pom poms, foam fingers, and pennants. Then let your guests snap away. Be sure to have someone on hand to take photos of groups so everyone can be in on the fun.
This is another opportunity to go crazy with the team gear. Get it in every single picture you can. Give away a prize for the person, or group of people, who can use a certain prop in the most creative way. Whatever you want to do your guests will love, because everyone loves a photo booth.
it's really quite simple, and low cost, to DIY your own "photo booth." All you need is a phone stand and some sort of backdrop, which can be a simple sheet tacked to the wall or something. Bonus points if you decorate the sheet to make the backdrop a bit more fun. You can add a Ring Light if you have one, but the lighting inside your house is probably good enough for your purposes. Let your guests put their phones in the holder, go pose, and take some pictures. Post them up on social media with a few good hashtags and you're set!
Serve Up Game Day Eats
No matter what team you're cheering for, there are sure to be some tried-and-true game day favorites that everyone will love. Serve up hot dogs, hamburgers, wings, chips and dip, and of course plenty of beer. If you want to get really creative, try incorporating your team's colors into the food spread. For example, if you're rooting for the University of Michigan Wolverines, serve up some blue corn chips and yellow guacamole Dip.
If you're not much of a cook, or don't want to spend the time making all the food, there are plenty of places that will serve up trays of wings or other delicious foods for your party. BBQ is a great option, and you can't go wrong with pizza and beer. It can be really simple, because as long as folks are eating, they're happy!
Play Some Competitive Games
Everyone loves competition if they love football. The battles. The overtimes. The rivalries. Most of us aren't still getting on the field every week to play against elite athletes, but that doesn't mean we can't take simpler, easier games way too seriously.
Paper football is actually a great throwback to when we were kids in grade school. Make a paper football and play little tournaments at the table with your guests. Everyone can have a football with their team on it, challenge other people to a game, and first one to score a touchdown and kick a field goal wins. Keep it fast and play lots of rounds - it'll be fun!
Cornhole is another great option, and you can play as singles or as teams. There are many great options to get tailgate cornhole boards, or bags, too, which will fit the "use all the team swag you can" rule we established earlier in this article. Make a bracket for everyone at your party and see who the cornhole champion is!
Organize a Pool or Betting Bracket
Speaking of brackets, you can keep track of everyone's overall bracket progress depending on where in the season you are. You can also come up with a pool to allow people to bet on scores based on the quarters of the game, the overall score, the winner, etc.
It's also fun to add in a bunch of fun side-bets as well. Put an over/under on number of penalties. Take bets on which team has more fumbles, or total number of first downs. Sometimes it's too easy to just pick a winner, or pick a score. Get into the nitty gritty and have your guests try to choose who will rush for the most yards, or which coach yells at the officials most. You can bet on anything, so get creative and have fun with it. It can make the more mundane aspects of the game much more fun.
Make a Playlist of Fight Songs
It's no secret that the commentary can leave something to be desired. Sometimes you need to blast your team's fight song as loudly as possible when they score, especially if you have guests that support the opposing team. Take this opportunity to be obnoxious about it and play that fight song every time something good happens for your team.
Half the fun of watching games with your friends is the banter and messing around you do to pump up your team and humiliate your friends when their team is losing. Sometimes you just have to go to the extreme, and playing fight songs can be a great way to rile everyone up!
Plan Your Next College Football Party Today!
Whether you're cheering on your favorite team or just hosting a party for the love of the sport, these six ideas will help you throw an epic college football bash that all your friends will be talking about long after the season is over. So get out there and show your school spirit! GO TEAM!