Homegating Ideas for Super Bowl Sunday

If you're not lucky enough to be tailgating in Indianapolis at the actual Super Bowl this year, you're most likely doing one of two things: tablegating at your favorite sports bar or restaurant to watch the game or homegating which is either attending a Super Bowl party at someone's home or hosting one yourself. There are endless ideas for throwing a football themed bash, here are a few I tested out during this past season, whether it was football Sunday or college football Saturday, I had fun making football themed treats to help root on my favorite teams.

You can find all sorts of football goodies to help spruce up your table at your local grocery and party stores during the season. I have a few Virginia Tech and Redskins items that I already owned and then I added a few random football themed items including the chocolate football, the green centerpiece with little footballs on it, football cups and a football shaped food tray. If your team is playing in the Super Bowl, go all out with decorations that represent your team and it's colors. If your team is not playing and your just hosting a generic Super Bowl party, focus more on football themes and you can include the colors of both teams playing if you don't hate the teams. More important than decorations though is the food! You can get creative and make pretty much any food item football themed by adding some lacing if it's close to a football shape. My technique is pretty bad on all of these but hopefully you can take the ideas and make them better yourself.

Everyone loves a good sandwich. You can make any sandwich into a football sandwich by adding lacing on top of a sub roll using your favorite condiment. For these I made tuna melts and the lacing is in ranch dressing.

Next I made a 7-layer dip but instead of having the cheese on top, I made guacamole the top layer so it looked like a football field. I then added lines in sour cream to look like the goal lines.  

I didn't make football shaped cookies but I added footballs to these peanut butter cookies using chocolate icing. I then made the lacing in different colored icing to represent different teams.

I saw a cute idea to make cheese, crackers and salami with lacing on them to look like footballs. I couldn't get the lacing thing enough so mine don't look like footballs but they still were tasty and looked cute on the football tray.

A beer cocktail is a fun twist on a signature cocktail to have at your football party. Beer might be too boring and mixed drinks might be too girly, but a beer mixed drink is the perfect compromise. Click here for the recipe.    

Finally, pizza goes with football like tea goes with tea parties. Make your plain cheese pizza themed by making a football in the shape of pepperonis in the middle of your pie. You can also make the lacing with some extra pieces of cheese. Just add it to the pizza for the last couple minutes. My lacing got a little too melted but you get the idea.  

Looking for a simple sweet treat to make for your spread? Football cupcakes are the perfect fit. All you need to do is whip up a batch of your favorite cupcakes. I decided to go with yellow cake and chocolate frosting. If you don't want to use chocolate frosting, just use a simple sugar frosting recipe with brown food coloring. Then add the laces with white icing. I used green cupcake liners to add to the look.

Don't forget to have something to safely abuse when you're mad about a call or a play! I recommend this punching bag ref. He represents who you're usually most mad at and it's fun to smack him around with no damage to your remote, tv or other breakables in your home.