Sports fans move toward home "

Time to stock up the man cave - home tailgating is on the rise.

This is according to Mark Stewart, executive director of the Tailgating Industry Association. With more than 20 million people engaging in some form of tailgating activity, TIA estimates the annual take for the industry at around $20 billion this season. Stewart confirmed that football - including high school, college and pro - is still the sporting event most closely associated with tailgating, but added that year-round industry sales are the rule, not the exception.

Auto racing and baseball dominate the spring and summer months, and during the winter, basketball and hockey fans have taken tailgating off-site - giving up parking lots in favor of college dorms, man caves and backyards. Click here for more on home tailgating.

So while you watch those football games with family and friends over the holidays, take comfort in the fact that retailers - tailgating and otherwise - are very thankful for you and the dollars you spend.

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Kelly Faloon was a former editor of Plumbing & Mechanical as well as the BNP Media Plumbing Group’s Integrated Content Development Specialist. She also was a former editor of the Radiant Comfort Guide the Radiant & Hydronics Report — both official publications of the Radiant Professionals Alliance — and twice-monthly Radiant & Hydronics eNews, an enewsletter for anyone interested in the world of heating with hot water.

Her editorial specialties included women in plumbing, recruiting for the trades, green construction techniques, water conservation, water treatment, hydronic heating, radiant heating and cooling, snow melt, solar thermal and geothermal.

After a 3½-year stint at sister publication Supply House Times, Faloon joined the PM staff in December 2001 as senior editor. She was named PM’s managing editor in 2006 and editor in 2013.

Previously, she spent nearly 10 years at CCH, a publishing firm specializing in business and tax law, where she wore many hats — proofreader, writer/editor for a daily tax publication, and Internal Revenue Code editor.

A native of Michigan’s northern Lower Peninsula, Faloon is a 1986 journalism graduate of Michigan State University.