UTEP tailgating turns terrible as huge heap of trash is left covering parking lots
EL PASO, Texas -- It was UTEP's biggest football game in years which in turn saw the biggest crowd in years - 31,658 inside the Sun Bowl stadium. But with that turnout, came out of control tailgaters and the mess they left behind.
David Simental, who runs one of the private parking lots on Sun Bowl Drive, told ABC-7 there is always a mess after football games - but this time around there was roughly triple the amount of trash.
"It was pretty rough," Simental said. "There was trash like everywhere over the whole lot. We have about 1,000 spaces and this Saturday we had a lot of RVs people tailgating, so there was a lot of trash."
After a typical football game, Simental said it would take them from about three hours to cleanup, but this time he estimated it was about seven hours of cleanup time. And the amount of trash bags they filled jumped from the usual 50 usually to about 300.
Simental said he was disappointed in the community that tailgating got this out of hand this time.
"There should be a lot more security," Simental said. "People were throwing rocks and we picked up a lot of broken glass."
In response to concerns, UTEP officials issued the following statement to ABC-7:
“UTEP’s game day tailgating activities are similar to those found in top college football programs across the country. When tens of thousands of fans show up to support the team, sometimes things get a little messy. We are thankful for the hard work by the UTEP staff to have trash left behind cleaned up by the next morning. As always, after every home game we evaluate and look for ways to improve the next Miner game day experience.”
