Just curious - Hookmania Edition

I grew up near D.C. where college football doesn’t exest, so while watching Saterday morning football there was one team always on..Notre Dame. I grew up watching them some what and they became my college team.

Fast forward a lot of years and things have totally changed. I met a girl (don’t these stories always have that subplot?) and we clicked. I come to find out she went to PSU and upon her hearing me say I liked Notre Dame, made it her quest for that to change.
My first weekend in State College was a blur, beer and pizza, pizza, and beer. Parties and blasty blasty times where everywhere. I tried to fight it but the whole atmosphere was growing on me. After my first game the transformation was complete. Now I’ve been more of a pro football man and I thought I knew what tailgating was from going to pro games. I couldn’t have been more misguided. 9am outside the stadium and things where well under way, beer pong, beanbag toss, and great grill smells were everywhere! I’ve been to a couple of games and even got to sit in the student section. Beaver Stadium is arguably the best home field in the NCAA, and being there live was something I’ll never forget.

So for the past 3yrs I’ve followed them closely. I look forward to blogging with you all.

WE ARE PENN ST!

student/alumni… but it goes much farther back than that. my dad, plain and simple. my first game was BYU at night in 89(correct me if im wrong), but literally all my life, dad has talked about going to penn state; cancelled plans because of penn state, missed weddings because of penn state, he’s some what of a legend in my own mind. aside from a heart attack, and a weekend of inventory that he couldnt control, he’s been to every game since 1972. for me one game turned into two, and two turned into a few games each season until i started making road trips with dad and going to all the home games. ive since gone to state, graduating in 2005 (04 was my last season), and been blessed with the ability to purchase season tickets.

i guess you could say i was born into this blessing and bleed blue and white through and through

I didn’t know the rules and never watched a game. I graduated in 1987 and I didn’t even know that PSU just won a national championship! I was dead set on going to Rutgers so I wouldn’t be so far from my boyfriend (lame, I know), but my Dad begged me to go to Penn State. He put a deposit down for Rutgers but convinced me to go to Penn State summer session to try it out — if I hated it, I’d go to Rutgers in the fall.

Needless to say, after 2 days on campus I was in love with it. After the first football season (sadly, I didn’t have tickets that year) I was a first rate Penn State fanatic. I think the ’87 snow bowl where we beat Notre Dame in the last few minutes was the clincher.

Thanks, Dad. You were right all along.

He is the reason our family is a PENN STATE family. It all started for him as a kid, he went to a football camp and one of the guest coaches was none other than Joe Pa. My Dad was tailback and made a good run and Joe said something to him about it and smacked him on the shoulder pads, and that was it. It was like he was touched by God himself. Ever since then my Dad as become increasingly fannatical about PSU. We lived in Bermuda for 12 years and he did what ever he could to watch a game (He worked for the NASA Tracking Staton while he was there), he would go to the lengths to do it to. There have been a few times that my dad a repostioned NASA satelitte dishes to catch a big game or a bowl game. We’d have a tailgate party and watch the games in a conference room. After we moved back to the staes he started getting tickets here and there until 99 or 00 when he got season tickets, he has had them ever since. He has a room dedicated to PSU and Joe Pa. It used to be his computer room, which of course has his computer and all kinds off computer books and computer crap. That has since been replaced by PSU mags, books gadgets, trinkets, framed pictues ohh and the computer is still in there. On game days we are heading to Happy Valley from VA. in a blue (of course) two tone F-250 with PSU magnets all over it and the bule and white pom pons coming of the back bumper , it get looks has we are driving through VA and MD but when we get into PA we get the honks and cheers from other PSU fans.
He is the reason me and my two brothers and Penn State fans, it may be to a lesser degree but we haven’t had the time in that my Dad does.

I was born while PSU was playing a kickoff classic game against Nebraska in 1983. PSU got stomped that game and I was deemed bad luck….kidding of course. My father has had season tix since 1979, so three weeks later I was at a PSU homegame. I have been going to games every year since then. Although I did not attend PSU (too costly out of state), I already felt apart of the PSU family with the amount of times I have traveled there. I live and die by PSU now.

I grew up rooting for ND #1 and PSU#2. Of course when PSU played in the MNC games in the 80’s I rooted hard for PSU and celebrated their championships. Around the time that I went to college at Slippery Rock, Kerry Collins became the QB at PSU and I started to follow PSU more because of the local interest. As time went by I found myself following PSU soley which was spurned on by our entrance into the Big Ten and the fact that my girlfriend/soon to be wife was a Buckeye and I put up my defenses whenever I was around other Buckeyes. Later in life I attended PSU as a non-traditional for a few years but since then I transferred in order to get my degree a lot quicker. Hopefully things will work out in the future and I’ll get my 3rd degree from PSU. I’m technically an alumnus because of the total amount of credits that I have at PSU but I’d love to get that paper!

Nobody in my family has ever attended PSU, in fact, I was the first person in my family line to go to college. That will change someday because my son loves PSU and has already told me that someday he’ll go to the real PSU and not just some branch campus. LOL!

My grandfather went to the Pennsylvania State College. My father went to the Pennsylvania State University. My parents had their first date at the Rathskellar. I was born at Centre Community Hospital (essentially in the Beaver Stadium parking lot).

I grew up in State College. My first game was Cincinnati in 1983, I was seven, they lost, I cried. From that point on we went to Beaver Stadium on Saturday like most normal people go to church, every Saturday at 9:00 am regardless of game time. I learned to read by reading the media guides that came with season tickets. I learned to mix drinks for adults at tailgates when I was eight. I learned to make extra money by scalping tickets in the parking lot when I was ten. I met John Shaffer at the Tavern two weeks before the Fiesta Bowl he signed a napkin for me that hangs framed in my living room today, 22 years later. I was 25 years old when somebody (my current Wife) told me that wearing black Nike’s with rolled up kaki pants was weird, it literally had never occurred to me. I still by my pants too log and roll them up.

I guess my point is, I never had a chance. I’ve been a Penn Stater longer than I can remember. I couldn’t change it now if wanted to.

We lived in Boalsburg, but it is so small that I always say that I grew up in SC. My parents taught on campus. I’m the youngest of six kids, all of whom went to PSU. Pretty much all my friends in high school went to PSU. Most of my neighbors went to PSU. My friends parents worked for PSU. My neighbors parents worked at PSU. The local paper, radio & TV all covered Penn State. As soon as I started following sports, it was always Penn State.

Penn state is in my blood. My parents met while going to school there. I will always remember the games I watched when i was little. Bowl games against tennesee and florida state. players like sacca and for some reason craig fayak sticks in my mind. I met my girlfriend at Penn State. I have another brother who graduated after me and one who will be a sophmore this year. I love that place and that team. I live in Boston now and nobody up here can understand. They dont have college football up here like we do. Penn State Forever

The Nittany Lion shat me out his arse, and it’s been history ever since!

Actually, both my parents were students up there (til my dad got kicked out)(my mom graduated in 3.5yrs), I was born in Bellefonte hospital and lived my first few years in a trailer on the mountain. Legend has it (my parents’ legend) that I went to my first game at 6mos old, and all the co-eds were swooning about how cute the baby is, so my dad passed me up the student section, ala the Nittany Lion. It’s been in my blood ever since.

They were/are diehards and refused to allow their first grandnephew to root for anyone else. Granted, in December I’ll have a degree from PSU, so I’ve got the student/alum thing as well.

Grew up in the Philly suburbs, so I was a Penn State, Eagles, Phillies, Flyers, Sixers fan. Still remember doing “Something for Joey” as a 6th grade book report. When it was time for college, I only applied to Penn State – there was nowhere else I wanted to go. One of my best decisions ever.

I was raised around Penn State football. My first recollection was in ‘87 when my parents flew to Arizona to the watch Sunkist Fiesta Bowl, I was only 7 at the time but remember watching because they were at the game and I’ve been hooked ever since. Saw many a Rutgers beat downs at the Meadowlands back in the day, for some reason those are the only games I remember going to but know for a fact I went to more. I never attended PSU but have been spending time there since I was about 12 years old. My brother-in-law graduated from PSU so I would spend two weeks during the summer there. I spent hours at the arcade(name escapes me, it was open ‘till like 2am on College Ave.) playing Mortal Kombat II and when I got older, spent a few hazy nights with friends that I haven’t seen since those summers, good times indeed. I drove 2 1/2 hrs one way to 15 home games during the dark years(I am not including 2002) which tells me two things: I like to torture myself and although I never attended Penn State it’s in my blood.

OK maybe not a nutshell

I was born in Pennsylvania in an Ohio State fan base (my father – he was a Woody Hayes fan through and through – but I eventually did convert him). I have now lived longer in Ohio than Pennsylvania (how sad) but I went to Penn State (even though an OSU fan at the time) but once I met true Ohio State Fans in State College (PSU-OSU game 1976) they truely sickened me and I dropped the Buckeyes to be a completely True Blue Penn State Fan. Although living in Ohio I have had season tickets since 1980 and all of my children, born and raised in Ohio, are Penn State Fans. It has been hard on them since joining the Big 10, but the same things that turned me off on Ohio State fans in 1976 is still clear to them (of course the disclaimer is that all schools do have the nasty fans, OSU just seems to have a lot more these days, and some of it is justified they are winning). But this year is the year to take it all back in Columbus..

Let’s GO P S U !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I grew up in the Lehigh Valley surrounded by PSU fans and paid attention but never really latched on to the team. I started college in Pittsburgh, and a year later one of my best friends took a preferred walk-on offer and joined the PSU football team. I started driving up on the weekends to take his unused student section tickets and got to know a few of the players. I had a great time sampling the whole Penn State weekend experience even though the team was garbage (2003). Then, the 2005 season happened and made me a rabid fan — the point at which I changed was almost certainly standing in the student section while the defense applied a 60 minute beatdown to Lawrence Maroney. So maybe this approach makes me less of a diehard than the PSU alumni, but man, I went to a school full of Ohio State fans and words cannot describe how much fun it was to rub that 2005 game in their faces.

My parents are alums.. met there… well mom would have been if not for me.
First game with aunt and mom.. Pitt Stadium… i think in 70 or 71… 52-7.. hooked since