Family and friends of a Penn player hand out Irish coffees at Kevin Walsh’s tailgate.

Kevin is practically a professional tailgater; he graduated from messy charcoal grills years ago, for example, and now brings a propane tank to power his grills and his handwarmer. He has no connection to Pennsylvania, but he came to support his buddy’s nephew, Rob Milanese, a senior who plays wide receiver for Pennsylvania.

He tailgates all the time at New York Giants and Yankees games and boasts about his “eat ’em then beat ’em” theory; at most of his tailgates, he serves food inspired by the day’s opponent, buffalo burgers for the Bills, cheese steaks when the Giants take on Philadephia.

The trouble today for Pennsylvania was that no one wanted baked beans in Beantown, so they ate hamburgers and chicken instead.

“Since we couldn’t eat ’em, we couldn’t beat ’em,” he says.

Rob, one of Penn’s key wide receivers, leans slumped against a car, talking with his grandparents, who postponed their trip to Florida for a week so they could come to the game today.

“I think it’s great,” Rob says of his followers at the tailgate. “It’s good to see people support [the team], especially after a big loss when they’re cheering me up.”

As it gets darker, the parking lot empties fast. Soon Rob’s grandparents will head to a hotel before their morning flight to Florida. Rob will go to stay with a friend in Boston. And Kevin will pack up his three-person fold-up couch, put the trash in his trunk and pull his truck out of the lot until the next tailgate.

—Staff writer Andrew S. Holbrook can be reached at holbr@fas.harvard.edu.