Aggie Park on game day is a patchwork of tents and tables blanketed by the smoke of barbecue and the thrum of blasting music. Students laugh and clink plastic cups while former students sling arms around jersey-clad shoulders. Yet, tucked toward the back, there’s one tailgate with a different kind of energy. The spirit is high, but the laughs are softer and the hugs mean just a little bit more.

This tent is filled not with classmates or donors, but with the people who know the players best — their families.

The Aggie Football Player Family Tailgate debuted last year after assistant to the head football coach Brandy Douglass emailed players’ parents to convey that coach Mike Elko and the football organization were interested in initiating an off-site tailgate. Before last season, parents and family mingled in the Hall of Champions. Now, they crowd under tents in Aggie Park, enjoying catered food and buzzing with the Aggie spirit.

“There is no way without Brandy Douglass any of this would happen,” parent liaison Jlyn Jackson said. “She’s our biggest advocate. Coach Elko is extremely supportive and encouraging, and really wants a community. People have been amazing to make sure that we have that atmosphere to grow, and it’s been important to me personally to make sure that happens for my son.”

As parent liaison, Jackson is in charge of everything but the tents and the tables. She handmakes centerpieces, coordinates with the balloon vendor and the caterers and organizes a special guest appearance, such as the Yell Leaders or dance team.

“If you go to a lot of other places, they have big tailgates, they have big parties,” Jackson said. “But it’s not this. You don’t have people sitting around genuinely fellowshipping and having that Aggie Spirit. This is the perfect atmosphere, and anything I can do to make sure this stays, I’m going to do.”

But she can’t do it alone. With upwards of 100 people stopping by in the hours before kickoff, Jackson relies on a team of parent coordinators. Kathryn Buntyn, Amanda Beal and Kathryn Jones make up that team, while other families pitch in financially or offer services.

“It’s a great contribution and great way to support the team,” Holly O’Neill, the mother of redshirt freshman quarterback Miles O’Neill, said. “Creating the family before you walk in through the gates and get behind the football team, it’s a great way to warm up for the game.”

For many parents, the tailgate is about more than food and fellowship — it’s about supporting their players in personal ways. Natasha Sanford, mother of freshman cornerback Deyjhon Pettaway and junior linebacker Daymion Sanford, said the experience impacts each of her sons differently.

“They’re night and day compared to each other,” Sanford said. “They need different things. My freshman likes all the attention. He wants to be told he’s doing a great job and really thrives off of that. My other son could care less if he has a belt on. He just loves to see who shows up, who’s coming to support him. He likes family being around.”

The impact of the parents’ support doesn’t just affect the ones wearing the jerseys. For those who attend the tailgate, it creates a community that understands the challenges and unique experiences of being a player’s parent.

“If this didn’t exist for us, it would be an entirely different experience, and it would be quite lonely,” Kristin Bourdon, the mother of redshirt freshman offensive lineman Robert Bourdon, said. “We travel from out of town, but if you didn’t have the family tailgate, there’d be no opportunity to bond with the players’ families. Our son isn’t from Texas, has never been to Texas before coming here to go to school, and so these are people that will stand in for my husband and I when we’re not around. It’s not just a tailgate at all.”

While parents lead the effort, the tailgate draws in extended family, friends and neighbors to be a part of gameday as well. Neighbor to the family of sophomore linebacker Kyle Garvis, Alexis Walker attended the tailgate before the game against Utah State.

“We’re very fortunate,” Walker said. “We live across the street from a mom and dad of a player, Kyle Garvis, and they invited us to come and see what it’s like to hang out with the player tailgate family. We’re loving it, is all I can say. We’re absolutely having a blast, we feel very welcomed.”

It’s still early in the season, but Jackson is already thinking about the future of the tailgate. When her son graduates next year, and she leaves along with him, she hopes another parent will take up the mantle.

“I hope that, as it goes year by year, parents want to carry it on,” Jackson said. “I’ll do everything I can to help them, but at the end of the day, I’m not gonna be a player family anymore. As long as you have somebody like Elko and Brandy that’s around, building this culture, then it’s going to stick and it’s going to grow.”

For parents, loved ones, coaches and players, the tailgate has become a symbol of everything that Aggie Football stands for.

“This is the heartbeat of the game,” O’Neill said.