Anyway, on tailgating, you guys brought it up so now I feel like providing a little history from my perspective.
First off, as long as I've been going to Texas games (as a kid in the late 70s) there have always been tailgate parties. But most were small, and indeed many (including ours) started off with nothing more than a cooler of beer, a radio, and a pickup truck tailgate thrown down.
We were actually the very first group that I ever saw at UT, that started setting up tents/canopies/awnings, in about 1995. I'm sure everyone claims to be the first at something, and it's possible that in another lot far far away from where we did it, other folks had thought to bring some kind of shade covering.
But in that large area of Texas state government parking lots-- where those of you who met up with me in 2007 found us-- there was nobody else setting up canopies before we did. We started with a cheap 8x12 tarp, that we used tent poles in the corners and drove tent stakes directly into the asphalt parking lot to attach ropes/guy wires. We'd also tie off to the beds or wheels of our friends' trucks.
Obviously it grew from there, and since the now-ubqiquitous 10x10 EZ-Ups weren't around back then, we invested in a couple of 10x20 "King Canopy" shade structures-- the kind that people use as a temporary car port, with lots of tent poles and a lage tarp bungied to the top. We expanded that to the two 10x20s and one 16x24 at our peak, and the largest tailgate we ever did was the 2006 Ohio State game where we went through 10 full-sized kegs of craft beer, 20 cases of crappy macro-swill, 3 cases of Tito's, a couple hundred pounds of BBQ, and countless gallons of tater salad, cole slaw, beans, and other assorted sides and snacks. Going by plates used, we served over 250 people that day. Not the largest catering gig I've ever done, but certainly the most grueling.
Anyway, when EZ-Ups became available, it certainly made our lives a lot easier. We also traded out my 4x8 cargo trailer for a friend's van, that he just kepy packed almost year-round with our gear, and eventually we also started taking our RVs down and stayed overnight for the entire weekend fairly regularly.
These days though, I guess we're back to drinking beer on the back of an actual pickup truck tailgate. It was fine while it lasted.