"the greatest show in college football"

This is a blog about my belief in Penn State.  It is about my memories that I have accumulated over the years. And it is about my love for the Valley.

While to me it will always seem like more than a school that happens to have a rich football tradition, to many that is exactly what it is. On one hand, I wish that they could see more. But on the other, I know exactly where they are coming from.

One of the greatest parts about Penn State’s great football tradition is relatively new. Over the past ten years or so, the student section has grown from great to amazing. Because I’ve been going to games for nearly all my life, I’ve had the chance to see firsthand these changes happening.

I remember the first time that “Zombie Nation” was played; I remember the first Paternoville; I remember the first White Out, and the first White House; I remember when “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” first came on, and I remember the first time I saw the student section go incredibly wild after watching a slow motion wave crawl around the stadium.

As amazing as all of these things are to see from afar, this year I got to experience them first hand. After years of envying the college kids in the seats on the other side of the stadium from where I sat, I finally got to be one of them this year. And, as several of you well know, it is one of the coolest experiences ever.

The student section of Beaver Stadium is rightly heralded as “The Greatest Show in College Football.” The drunken comments, the sober comments, the blue and white shakers, the waves, the singing, the yelling, the wins, and the losses – it’s all intoxicating. I can’t get enough of it.

From this season in particular, my favorite moment was (in what happened to be Paterno’s last game) the southwest and southeast ends of the student section flocked to the behind the goal post and distracted the Illinois kicker on what would have been a game winning field goal. It was utterly epic, and absolutely symbolic of the spirit of the students all year. 

ESPN once wrote that one of the top one hundred things to do as a sports fan was see a game in Beaver Stadium. What better place than from the eyes of a student.