If this isn’t the American male’s dream come true, it’s close enough. Every Saturday during the football season, Krause Gentle Corp. President and CEO Bill Krause hops onto a company airplane and jets off to watch the Iowa Hawkeyes play football.

Out of a group of 50 or more friends and business associates, he calls a half-dozen and invites them to go along on the eight-passenger Citation Encore plane. When the Hawks are playing at home, the Krause crew takes off from Des Moines International Airport and lands in Iowa City 18 or 19 minutes later.

They make their way to the Kinnick Stadium parking lot, and then it’s time for a modern American tradition that has moved way, way beyond the origin of its name — tailgating.

This form of partying might have started with a plastic cooler on the lowered tailgate of somebody’s pickup truck, but now we’re in the era of big tents and catered food, and the pre- and post-game socializing can last longer than the football game itself.

“We land in Iowa City two and a half hours before game time,” Krause said. For the past 15 years, the food awaiting them at Kinnick has been provided by Hy-Vee Inc. The 2005 season duties are being handled by “a couple of gentlemen in Iowa City,” Krause said.

“They’re going to do the hot dogs, brats, hamburgers and adult beverages like they would do them in the back yard,” he said. “We’re not about being fancy; we’re not trying to impress anybody. The Kum & Go tent has been like a beacon, kind of a gathering spot for a lot of people. Not about fine dining, it’s about friendships, relationships. It’s for those who have the Hawk mania.”

An hour before kickoff, Krause heads for his skybox suite. By game time, at least a dozen people are there with him, he says. And after the game? “We never worry about what time we return,” he said.

But all of that is just his routine for the home games, when the outing is a couples event. Remember, half of any football season is the away games.

Krause flies in the company jet to those games, too, but those trips are for men only. “Out-of-town games have been for many years a boys’ afternoon away from home,” he said. “I attended 111 consecutive home and away games at one time, until a health problem broke that string. In the last 10 years, I’ve only missed one or two of the away games. They’re never more than two hours away. Champaign (Illinois) is only 40 minutes.”

Krause, who donated millions to the Kinnick Stadium renovation, has been a Hawkeye fan through a couple of up-and-down cycles for the program. With hopes so high this year, what would be his plan if his beloved team were to make it to a national championship showdown in the Rose Bowl?

“I would try to get away,” he said.

Meanwhile up in Ames, a guy who has not only watched bowl games but played in them – including the National Football League’s Super Bowl – finally stepped up his tailgating standards for the 2005 season.

Forty or 50 families in Tom Randall’s neighborhood pooled their resources and spent $4,400 for the right to use a tent in the Iowa State University parking lot this season. “Everybody was informally getting together before the games, and the group just kept getting larger and larger,” Randall said. So they got organized and named themselves the North Cy-ders. “We’ve even got a treasurer,” he said.

A Mason City native, Randall played defensive tackle on some solid Earle Bruce-coached ISU teams in the mid-1970s. In 1977, the Cyclones made it to the Peach Bowl, and Randall was named to the Big Eight all-conference team. He went on to the NFL, where he played on a Dallas Cowboys team that went to the Super Bowl and was with the Houston Oilers when they made it to a conference championship game.

Now he owns and operates the Tom Randall Real Estate Team, and has attended Iowa State games faithfully for 20 years or so. When the Cyclones opened their season Sept. 3, for the first time he had some shelter for his tailgating.

And the food – aah, the food was terrific. “The week’s host gets to pick the main dish,” he said, and for the night game against Illinois State “we had wonderful pork loins; they were marinated and really delicious. People really get into it.”

The North Cy-ders are part of “tent row” in the vast parking lot between Jack Trice Stadium and Hilton Coliseum, where you can get a one-game tent if you don’t want to spring for the whole season.

Prices vary widely. A standard tent measuring 20 feet by 30 feet goes for $700 at four of the home games; for the clash with Iowa, the price soared to $2,100. For the game against Colorado, halfway into the unreliable weather of November, you pay a mere $250.

A Citation Encore, on the other hand, will run you more than $7 million.