On a fall Saturday in Fargo, you can feel the tailgate before you see it. The air smells like charcoal and burgers. Car stereos and laughter blur together. Kids toss footballs between coolers. Old friends spot each other from half a block away. For Bison fans, a day like this is one of the best days of the week.
And this year, one spot at the tailgate got a serious upgrade.
NDSU’s Bison Corral, the public-facing tented tailgate area at the south end of Thunder Alley, became a true “come one, come all” destination. It’s a place for people to stay. To eat. To warm up. To let the kids burn off energy. To watch football shoulder-to-shoulder with people you might’ve met five minutes earlier.
And at the center of it all is Mobile Pro.
The Corral Reimagined
Bison Sports Properties General Manager Josh Hartman has watched game days evolve for years. So, he is aware that plenty of fans love tailgating, but not everyone has a setup
“The corral is the end of Thunder Alley on game day, where we have a tent,” Hartman said. “It’s a great tailgate game day experience for our fans that don’t have their own tailgate setup.”
This season, NDSU took a bigger role in shaping what that area could be after taking over for Teammakers who had run it previously. Their goal was to make the area more complete, and Mobile Pro became a key part of that plan.
“Mobile provides the big screen TV,” he said. Simple on paper. Huge in practice.
If you love college football, you know that the screen is extremely important. What’s better than kicking back with a drink in one hand, food in the other, and College Gameday or an early day game being played in front of you on the big screen? Probably not much.
