Tailgaters from both schools enjoy hot food and high spirits before and after Saturday’s Harvard-Penn game.

A little before 10 a.m. on Saturday, just as the Crimson football team sat down for a final motivational speech and the University of Pennsylvania band tuned up, Darlene Sadoski unfolded a card table from her trunk and unpacked her picnic basket.

In her regular spot behind Harvard Stadium, she set the table complete with crimson tablecloth, yellow flowers and candelabra. She assembled bowls of tortilla chips, shrimp cocktail, salami, York Peppermint Patties and Cheese-Nips.

Darlene has tailgated with her husband Don since 1964. A “Harvard 1968” banner hangs on the car marking the year Don graduated.

Two and a half hours before kick-off, it’s just Darlene, Don and Don’s parents. But before the day is done, they expect 40 friends and relatives to stop by from as far away as Maine and Iowa.

“We’ve got it down to a system,” Darlene says as she opens a box of Triscuits.

To drink, there’s a bottle of Ernst and Julio Gallo merlot and a thermos of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. Don’s mother has brought a Tupperware container of her usual toffee-and-chocolate cookies—the same ones that she says once won her the title of “most valuable player” at an especially uneventful Harvard football game.

For almost a decade now, the Sadoskis have held their tailgates with the Giardi family, whose son, Michael R. Giardi ’94, was the Crimson’s star quarterback in the early nineties. Now Michael does color commentary for 830 AM radio along with Don and Darlene’s son Steve Sadoski ’95, who keeps stats.

They join a host of faithful alumni and their families whose tailgates support Harvard at every home game. Today’s game between the Crimson and the University of Pennsylvania matches two undefeated teams for the Ivy title, and alums have turned out in full force. Men wear crimson ties and vests, and women are wrapped in crimson scarves; some display vintage “Harvard Fight Fiercely” buttons from the fifties. They’ve come for the football game, but even more, they’ve come for the party in the parking lot.

The Sadoski and Giardi families have continued tailgating although they no longer have a direct connection to the football team.

“We particularly enjoy college sports,” Darlene says. “It’s still an innocent game.”

“There’s a special feeling among the Ivy players,” adds Don, who played for the Crimson as an undergraduate.

Soon friends start arriving. When Michael’s aunt pulls up, she brings enough platters to fill three card tables.

Diana Giardi Orlando got up at 5 a.m. to cook all this food. Today’s spread is larger than usual because it’s the last home game and she is expecting more visitors, although she’s used to turning out full force for the home tailgates.

The menu stays largely the same: chicken cutlet, chicken nuggets, buffalo wings, sausage and peppers, meatballs, pepperoni bread, ravioli, shrimp casserole, and “chicken parm,” and cake for desert.

“I used to do chicken divine, with cream of mushroom soup,” she explains. “But it’s a lot of calories so we stopped making it.”