"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.

home away from home

This week is another trip down memory lane. In this case that memory isn’t even on campus, but it’s certainly Penn State.

On the far end of College Ave, the Hampton Inn is one of the first things that you come to once you’ve gotten off of Exit 26 from 322. And it is this hotel that will be the subject of this week’s blog. That may seem pretty lame at first but, to me, that place is far more than a hotel.

To put it in perspective, I have probably spent more nights at that hotel than some people in this room have ever spent nights in any hotel. Every home football weekend for about ten years in fact.

Think about it, that may even be more times than you’ve slept at your grandparents and best friend’s house combined! Pretty insane if you ask me.

Football weekends would always start off with checking into the Hampton on a Friday night, and then heading over to the Damon’s next door for dinner. It was a pretty awesome tradition to have as a kid, one of the kinds of traditions that seem novel every time, even though you’ve had the experience before.

What separated the Hampton Inn from other hotels, in addition to simply being intrinsically valuable, was that it had perhaps one of the most delicious and unique continental breakfasts a hotel could have.

Every single morning, I would wake up and eat Grilled Stickies from The Diner. This is something that I didn’t even realize the amazingness of until I became a student here. Grilled Stickies? Those things are unbelievably awesome! I make trips to The Diner every time before I go home so I can bring some back to Delaware with me.

But this hoarding was unnecessary as a kid. Because, every day, every morning, I had an unlimited supply.

Unfortunately, a few years back, Hampton Inn’s stopped being individually owned and operated, and the business decided to regulate all the hotels. The Hampton that I spent many childhood nights in lost a lot of what made it special… including the Grilled Stickies. That being said, I still give it a glance every time that I drive by, because let’s face it, old sentiments live on. 

THON

THON.

Wow.

That’s really how I feel – speechless. I could easily ramble on for thousands of words attempting to explain how awesome it was, but it’s really not the same.

You need to experience it.

This blog is, of course, about my obsession with Penn State, how it defines me, makes me who I am. Naturally then, it’s fair to assume that this was one of my favorite experiences here if I’m saying that it still has me speechless.

It was one of my favorite experiences of my life.

THON weekend brought me a whole new level of respect and awe for this place. I mean, throughout the year I had been involved in my organization (unfortunately I hadn’t interviewed for a committee) and I saw the cause, and canned, and had fun, and was inspired, and everything that goes along with that. That is to say, I was excited for THON weekend even before I could fully appreciate it.

It only took forty-six hours to blow my mind (except I slept for about six of them... so let’s call it forty). I remember thinking after like the first seven or eight hours, “How are they going to keep this up until Sunday afternoon, how are they going to keep everyone hooked?” Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised.

THON is one of those magical things. It seems like a once in a lifetime experience as you take it in – and then you leave getting the satisfaction that it all starts over again next year.

I love kids. Don’t get me wrong; I loved all of the baggage and fanfare that came with the weekend. Go Go Gadget during the last hour was one of the most incredible things ever, and the Pep Rally was beyond sweet – but to see the kids taking part in all of the excitement is one of the most incredible scenes to watch.

It is amazing to sit back and watch these kids forget about their cancer, forget about their pain, their doctors, the hospital, the tears – and just be kids.

Rambling on is easy when you get to write about something that you love. For me, THON weekend was incredibly moving and powerful, and certainly something that all Penn State students need to experience. 

not just football?

Staying true to the plan of alternating weeks, this week will be something about my childhood here in Happy Valley. In fact, it will be about wrestling in Happy Valley.

Penn State has always been a pretty good wrestling school. It makes sense. Pennsylvania is generally regarded by many to the be the best pipelane for premier wrestlers in the country. But although the Nittany Lions have been a regular in the Top 5 (in collegiate rankings) in the past several seasons or so, winning the NCAA championship last year, they weren’t always as dominant as they are now.

The university wasn’t maybe. But the area certainly was.

I wrestled a lot as a kid. That was my thing. So much so, in fact, that if I had wanted to wrestle in college, I could have gone to nearly any school in the country that I had wanted (but that’s neither here nor there, because I grew to hate wrestling and I’d never do that). But I wrestled, and traveled, a lot. Of the forty states that I have been to, I’ve wrestled in over half of them, in hundreds of tournament spanning over a decade.

Sure, there were national tournaments halfway across the country that were (understandably so) always pretty tough. But, as a general rule, some of my hardest competition would always be in State College.

Annually, Penn State runs one of the toughest youth wrestling tournaments around. Every year, hundreds of kids come from across the region to “duke it out” in Rec Hall. Of course, at that time, it was just another building to me. There was no history, it wasn’t aesthetically pleasing, it was just a gym. But, looking back – it’s pretty cool to think about.

That’s not my only experience of wrestling here though. That was just one weekend a year, maybe for six or seven years. But my memories extend far beyond that. Additionally, every summer I’d come up here for a week for a Penn State wrestling camp. The camp would be run inside the Ramada Inn, maybe to give the illusion of a vacation and intensive camp mixed together, I don’t know, but either way, I found myself there every summer for quite some time.

Maybe it was all just a way for my dad to spend more time up here (he came to all of it). Maybe it was nothing more than a way to connect our family life and my wrestling career. Whatever the reason, Penn State became what some could refer to as my “homefield advantage” because I was here so much. Not that I minded or anything, winning and Happy Valley were always a pretty good combo to grow up on.

the floor.

For every blog entry, my goal is to alternate posts between past experiences at Penn State and experiences from my freshman year

Though still personal, this post may be a little less unique than the rest from this blog will be, but if that’s the case, then hopefully more people can relate to it. Personally, I was terrified to come here. I mean, yeah, it was all I dreamed about as a kid, but when the time came – I was so unbelievably scared.

I knew that I was better off than some. My sister’s a junior here, and there were a handful of kids from my high school that came. But when it came down to it, I wouldn’t be able to survive off of just this small number. Like the ten thousand other incoming freshman, I needed to make some friends.

Everyone knows how the next part goes. Anyone and everyone is seen as a potential friend; the kid in the elevator is just as scared as you, as is the kid in the bathroom, and of course you’ve already tried to Facebook stalk your roommate. In a nutshell, it’s all simply a part of being a freshman.

I’ve always been wary to use a word like “best” to describe my own personal opinions, it kind of drives me nuts when I hear people do it. (Even though it may be hard for you to believe, it is extremely unlikely that you have the “nicest” or “cutest” or “best behaved” dog in the world.) That being said, I won’t do it here – not remotely – but I will say that my floor worked out perfectly for me.

A street sign hanging on my dorm wall

We clicked. The Mifflin Misfits we referred to ourselves a few times. In a building filled with athletes, it’s almost as if the Penn State Housing Department decided to stuff us in the top floor of Mifflin Hall. The sixth floor became the Miff Six. Silly, maybe, but it became our Greek – our own fraternity. 

The unique personalities and backgrounds of everyone is something that I wouldn’t trade. On any given night, it would be surprising if there weren’t at least nine of us eating dinner together. Sometimes there’s as many as fourteen. There’s the kids from small towns and cities, the former athletes and band stars, the singers, the dancers, the gamers, we’re all there. And it’s awesome.

I suppose everyone has their own Miff Six on their floor. It’s our own family here in State College, connected by the gene pool of Penn Staters.