What would you give to be able to travel to any college football tailgate party, every weekend of the season? Now imagine that Sports Illustrated not only will pay you for it but will give you a camera crew and full license to poke a little fun at the tailgaters you encounter in the lots. That’s exactly the life Dan Rubenstein, a.k.a. the SI Tour Guy, leads. A man that admittedly did not know much about tailgating until he went to college, Dan has probably seen it and eaten it if it has appeared at a tailgate party. In this exclusive interview with TailgatingIdeas.com, Dan dishes on how he landed this dream job, which colleges have the hottest co-eds and reveals his own bucket list for tailgaters.

Tailgating Ideas: How did you become the SI Tour Guy? Were you doing this for another website and Sports Illustrated picked up on it? How did it come about that you are now traveling from tailgate party to tailgate party talking to fans and putting together humorous videos?

Dan Rubenstein: I originally was doing it on my own. What happened was I was working as an assistant for a movie studio. I was just really bored and checking my fantasy team everyday. I’m really into comedy and everything like that and it just sort came out of daydreaming and I put together the idea. I love college football and I love comedy. I had never really tailgated before and I was never really a fan of college football growing up because I live out in L.A. and it was always UCLA and USC. I really don’t have any connections to those schools. When I went to the University of Oregon it was just a whole new world to me. When I graduated I worked a little while down here (Southern California) and I came up with the idea and really had nothing to lose. I stayed local and funded it myself and I drove everywhere and just filmed. I went to the University of Oregon journalism school so I can edit and shoot it myself. I have friends who would help me out. That was around 2006 and I visited seven Pac-10 schools. The response was good and people seemed to like it. I decided to send it out everywhere on DVDs and made a highlight reel. I got a hold of Arash Markazi, who writes for SI.com, and he really seemed to like it. He passed it along to important people at SI and they really seemed to like it. Sort of a partnership was formed and they allowed me to produce the similar type of videos but on a national scale. I’m pretty lucky because this is a dream job really.

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