It Would Not Have Been An Important Moment Without A Camera-Phone Picture [Thoughts From Visiting The Shoe]

Yeah, I saw that on the TV broadcast. Awesome touch of the kids to do that. Reminds me of why I love PSU so much.

The atmosphere that you described is exactly what I witnessed at the Michigan game this year in Happy Valley. Hopefully it’s a trend that continues because I’m very proud of the fact that Penn Staters are considered to be respectful fans traditionally.

They seem like they treated PSU fans with respect. I hope the PSU fans returned the favor.

The Sea of Scarlet or Scarlet Fever or whatever they call it looks pathetic. It looks like just another Ohio State home game. And when they give the fans white towels to wave around it kind of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?

If they had any brains they would all wear gray. The concrete structure of the stadium would blend in perfectly as would all the white faces of the people. Even Penn State fans wearing the white road jerseys would blend in.

FAIL

Whose ready for the Iowa Greene out?

no wonder they are a sponsor on the Big Ten Network….they must also have a deal with OSU!

Dunno where to start with this one. Maybe Lou Holtz can summon the leadership skills of Adolf. He’ll know what to do.

Did they announce the game times for the last 2 games yet? I hope at least one of them is a 3:30 Kickoff! I love late afternoon games.

The OSU fans were nicer than I was expecting. Yeah, on the walk past some tailgates there were some obscenities thrown at us…basically what you’d expect. I think it also helped not really encountering too much of the student section.

Re: the open container laws. They are ridiculous. I go to a lot of Yankee games, and tailgate before the playoffs (when they made it), and they have the same ridiculous rules. Most of the cops even go around basically telling people to pour it into a plastic cup. I guess they reserve actually citing people for the obnoxiously drunk ones. I didn’t have any problem in Columbus walking around with 6 Yuengling bottles sticking out of my pockets while holding an Arby’s cup full of beer…guess I got lucky though.

The stadium is definitely the most impressive I’ve been to outside of Beaver Stadium. Camp Randall is good too, but the atmosphere at the Horseshoe seemed better all around. It was also much louder than Camp Randall (and probably on par with Beaver Stadium).

I was also impressed with how loud our fans were. Granted, I was in hte middle of the upper deck sections, so it would be loudest for me, but it really did seem quite loud. I wonder if they could even hear us on the field, though :-p

And yes ,most of their fans were respectful and wished us well for the rest of the season, and hope we bring back the crystal.

I had an absolute great time. I was aware of the solo cup rule before, and their campus police came around beforehand and even reminded us of that when they saw a case of lager out on the pavement. Very nice of them, and they basically reminded us that “well, we really don’t like doing paperwork at all.” That was awesome of them. My guess is most people who got citations were probably acting like amateurs (as is the case pretty much everywhere).

The fans at Ohio State, for the 99.9%, were classy as can be. I was sitting with adults in the stadium, and we talked football the entire game in a cordial fashion. Most of the fans in the stadium were nothing but courteous after the game. We did go into the bars across the street after the game, and some of the OSU fans, who seemed more college student aged, were a little ornery, but they were probably sitting in that bar all game and a little bit buzzed.

The best thing ever was when our tailgate asked 3 passing by OSU fans to do a shot with us. They quickly responded: “No way. You’re from Penn State.”

I had no idea college students turned down free alcohol, regardless of what color jersey the person pouring is wearing.

OSU fans were nice to us…..the occasional “good luck” was thrown our way. It was mostly the real adults who were nice. Once we were in the stadium it was a little different….probably b/c of the booze which flowed heavily throughout the day. Sat in section C8, my father (63) and I were seated near some OSU students.

“how does 8-1 sound?”

“31 years is a long time”

“too bad you guys don’t have Pryor”

“we own penn state”, was their response to our “we are penn state” cheers.

But one of the best cheers we had going was when OSU’s band was playing that generic song “Da Da Daaaa Da….HEY……Da Da Daaa Da ……. HEY”

The entire PSU visitor section made it our own….

“Da Da Daaaaa Da …… P……..Da Da Daaa Da………..S……….”

I know for a fact that cheer could be heard on TV. . .it sounded loud to me.

I also had a good time in Columbus. I went out with 9 other psu students and none of us ever had any trouble. We went there expecting the worst, but all the fans we encountered were good. There were a few students at gameday who got a little rowdy after we started doing the cowbell though.

I heard that they want to shake things up in Iowa City so they are going to make this guy, whose name is Hawkeye, as their new mascot.

My thoughts:

-Everyone we met was very nice, very friendly. No complaints at all from the fans. Had a couple of ‘PSU sucks!" lobbed at us, but no piss balloons or beer cans.
- Special thanks to the parking lot attendant who let us take up an extra space to set up our canopy, thus facilitating the biggest tailgate in our lot (Fawcett Bldg)
- Tailgating there is odd, and not just the beer-in-cup thing. 90% of the fans parked by us got in their cars and left to go drink downtown. All of the PSU fans stayed and tailgated by their cars, thus turning our parking lot into a fairly big PSU tailgate. Maybe everyone was so nice to us because we outnumbered them!
- The stadium needs more gates – getting in was nearly impossible. Far worse than anything I’ve seen at Beaver Stadium. Also, how about some signs once you get inside? I had to ask numerous concession stand workers where to go to find C-deck section 6.
- Huge round of applause to the guys who organized our S-zone, and huge credit to everyone in the S-zone who was going mental trying to make noise. I think my hand still hurt from playing ‘Rock n Roll’ on the bleachers… Can’t wait to re-watch and see how loud we were, especially at the end.
- For some reason, I thought it would be hysterical to shout out wrong letters to the OH-IO! cheer. So, if you saw a drunken guy randomly yelling out, “HH! I! HO! OI!”, it was me. Every now and then I’d throw an “OH!” at them to keep ’em guessing.

Great trip, everyone who can should put it on their calendars for ’10.