I trimmed 2 full cases of briskets in about 35 minutes before georgia last year by myself. I had some help the next morning from @Roofle with butts and ribs.
I am all for having more help, the issue really does become cost - I'm making very little on the home tailgates if anything at all, and the away games could make even more but so much gets eaten up by both site cost and catering. Until we hit about 600 people it doesn't start becoming profitable in a real way per person. Each away site just for the space on campus, tents, chairs, tables, coolers, TVs, high tops, wristbands, decorations etc is 20-25k depending on the school and food is more than that.
The issue really starts to become as soon as anyone else gets involved they want to "run their business" and they have cost profiles and margins they are chasing. After you pay 3 cycles of everyone trying to make 30-40% you are just getting fucked and it's impossible to do anything else but make everyone else money. Then at a certain scale people come to you and pay you to get them work and take smaller margins etc.
Everything is based on reaching some scale of about 1000+ or just fucking people on price.
With our own rig and a few people who would actually commit to working and it not being fun for them, but doing it because they want a kick ass party and then go to the game would make this a lot easier and better. Its not sustainable for me to shell out the price of a sick smoker setup every away game and hope I recoup it all, or god forbid make some money. I'd rather just make the money and with the operating profit reinvest and grow the footprint to a healthy and sustainable level.
Ask around to see what people want to smoke a whole hog, then consider doing it yourself and what that costs. A 150-200lb hog is only like 900 bucks on a bad day and like 70 bucks in wood and $12 dollars in seasoning. People are wanting 4k+ to smoke one. It's fucking insane.
Same BBQ I made for last SHSU which was $30 dollars per person pre sale and $40 walk up was under 1k in cost. catered it would have been 3700+. Its the difference between a real approachable tailgate at a reasonable price and just showing up to some party and charging everyone a bullshit price.
I guess /endrant.