For the first time ever, me and my 96,000+ closest friends enjoyed Penn State's first football game of the 2011 season together "inside" Beaver Stadium in State College, Pennsylvania. On Saturday, Sept. 3, Penn State played Indiana State. It was the first game Richard and I attended since moving to Pennsylvania. What a spectacle it was to have so many people in one place. And these were just my friends who decided to come into the stadium. That doesn't count all of the tailgaters outside the stadium.
After trying to describe how massive Beaver Stadium is, someone once asked me the following question: "Is Beaver Stadium bigger than Lavell Edwards Stadium?" (Lavell Edwards Stadium is located at the campus of my other alma mater, which is the Brigham Young University Cougars in Provo, Utah.) Well, the answer to this question is, "YES!" Now, let’s think about this a minute. To give all of you BYU Cougars some perspective, a sell-out crowd at Lavell Edwards Stadium is around 63,000+ people. Beaver Stadium, was not sold out for the Indiana State game; in fact, there were thousands of empty seats. So, for a football game at Beaver Stadium that was clearly not at a capacity seating versus a football game in Provo at capacity seating, Beaver Stadium was accommodating 33,000 more people on Saturday alone than Lavell Edwards Stadium can seat.
For the last few years Beaver Stadium has been the largest stadium (measured by seating capacity) in the United States because Michigan State's football stadium was not up to code. Now, in the U.S., Beaver Stadium is the second largest, with Michigan State being the only larger stadium. If you look at the size of these stadiums from a global perspective, Wikipedia indicates the May Day Stadium in Korea and the Salt Lake Stadium in India (not Utah) are the only larger football stadiums. Even if these wiki statistics are not 100% accurate, at least they give you some perspective on the seating capacity and the grandiose nature of Beaver Stadium.
Walking into Beaver Stadium. The heat and humidity were abnormally high on Saturday.
Pre-game show with the Nittany Lion.
PSU ran and scored a touchdown on the first play of the season/game, making the score 7 to 0 after only 14 seconds. I was very glad we were on time for the game. Those who were late missed out on a great play! The final score was 41-7, with Indiana scoring during the last few minutes of the game. I was actually really glad they scored. After working so hard it would be very disappointing for them to not score at all. They were very gracious at the end of the game. They impressed me by taking off their helmets and waving them to the crowd as they exited. What great sportsmanship. Due to the high score as well as the heat and the humidity, most people left the stands before the last quarter. So, we took advantage of the situation by going and sitting closer to the field. The last few pictures included here were taken after the game. But the last picture will give you an idea of where we sat for the first three quarters (in the balcony above Richards head and to the left). Even though the seats seem quite high, they were really great seats. After the game the Blue Band plays a few songs on the field, thus the pictures of them on the field while we are getting some pictures.
Nittany Lion traditions: After PSU scores, the Nittany Lion does pushups for every point on the score board. In addition, within the student section various students will lift up people within the crowd and push them into the air (the students lay flat on their back and it looks like an upside down push up). This is done for each point on the score board. It's pretty cool to watch.
Next week is the PSU vs. Alabama game. It's going to be a white out/white house (everyone wears white). Richard and I drove by a PSU game one year during a white out and it was incredible to see. The Alabama game should bring a packed house. The couple we we went with to Saturday's game have twin daughters who are camping out all week in Paternoville (near Beaver Stadium). By doing this they should get first or second row seats in the student section. Ticket prices are crazy right now, so the likelihood of being offered a great deal on tickets is not too probable, so we'll more than likely do a drive-by of the stadium just to see what it looks like.
