I’m not a choir boy. I cuss up a storm over stuff that happens at a game…on the field. Chanting “A**hole” at an innocent opposing fan is different. It’s just not right. The players and officials put themselves out there and expect that kind of thing. Opposing fans are people just like you and me, who just want to sit and enjoy a football game and root for their team.

you can be arrested for throwing marshmallows at a game now?

….I am sick of these stories like I am sick of hearing about Philly fans throwing snowballs at Santa Claus and booing Donovan McNabb at the draft. Don’t so something stupid if you think t makes you cool. We are Penn State. We should be better than that.

Chanting “A**hole” at an opposing fan who is just there to watch the game isn’t acceptable. If you need to do that to enjoy a football game then theres something wrong with you.

I 100% disagree with you.

If you want to yell at the players and the refs, do whatever you want. If you want to make an ass out of yourself, you paid for the ticket, you can do it.

But taunting and harassment like that isn’t only wrong, it’s against the law. Beaver Stadium isn’t a circus tent, and acting like it should be is pure ignorance.

I just graduated in the spring. I’ve been a Penn State Football fan for as long as I can remember. I had student tickets all 4 years i was there and never missed/scalped a game. I seriously believe that the tOSU game in 2005 was worth more than the $300-500 I probably could have got for the ticket.

That being said, when I was a freshman, I was guilty of turning my back on tOSU band, doing those (in retrospect I realize) stupid “f*** [insert team]” chants. And I fully agree that if an tOSU or scUM student wants to sit in the STUDENT SECTION, they deserve all the abuse that can be hurled at them (although I would say ACTUALLY throwing things at them is over the top). As I went through my years at PSU, and subsequently moved across the student section seating, I began to look over at the freshman starting those “f” chants, coming in late, etc, etc…and realized that that is the way things are. It is part of the new student culture you can’t change. They are new to tailgates, they go overboard on the drinking, whatever. They’ll learn, like everyone (usually) does.

HOWEVER, I don’t understand AT ALL why you would taunt someone from an FCS team or a team like Syracuse. Their fans have the friggen balls to support their team through some terrible times and go to away games to see it, something 80% of the students currently at PSU have never known, and would likely not do.

Also another note. I’m beginning to question whether or not the current problems in student section fullness are due to lack of enthusiasm, and possibly more due to the new ticket system. I was thinking about it yesterday, but would it be possible for PSU to expand that gate (aka make more turnstyles, specifically in the freshman/sophmore section)? But I will say, senior/juniors need to step up their sh**, stop drinking right up to game time, and take the responsibility of being FULL by kickoff. You guys drink 4 nights a week, and will drink immediately after the game! How hard would it be to drink 3 less natty’s and get some crowd noise/momentum going early?

…that’s why OSU’s band didn’t come in 2007, and probably won’t come this year.

1. The Opposing band doesn’t get close enough to the student section to lob said urine balloon, and someone had to have seen where they were coming from.
2. I don’t know how you’d fill up a balloon with urine to the point where it would actually burst upon impact. I won’t go into this further.
3. How would you either a) sneak urine filled balloons into the stadium without someone seeing or b) sneak back into the student section after filling up the balloons in the bathroom?

to fill up their section before the middle of the 1st quarter…for every game.

Hey thanks for the orientation. Is there a chance you could give me a tour of the Jordan Center too?

It’s fine later on when we’re up comfortably, but not in the 1st quarter. That was ridiculous. Why don’t you just hold a sign that says “I don’t care”

To your second point at least.

The student section just isn’t as genuine as it used to be.

Is it a good or bad thing? I can’t say. I can’t tell people how to enjoy the game, and I can’t tell them that it used to be "better" because maybe they like to "move it move it" and bust out the tye dyes more than they like genuinely coming to watch a football game.

I just know I’m not a fan of all the changes that have taken place in the last few years. They’re subtle, but they’ve changed the dynamic of not just the student section but the stadium in general.

We’ve talked about this a lot. A night like OSU ‘05 is going to be hard to re-create, simply because we’re good again. You can’t manufacture urgency like that by playing “who-hoo” over the loud speaker and sporting bellbottoms. Simple as that.

On this point anyway:

“I’m a recent graduate and look back at the student section as being my favorite time through out college. As I see it, the student section is about comradery! It’s about, ‘I don’t know who the h*ll you are, but you’re sitting in front of me and are now one of my best friends’. It where we’re all one big family (with minimal quarrels) and show the deepest PSU pride. I don’t want any OSU or Mich fans sitting anywhere in the student section”

Amen.

Yinzrfy me.

Probably helps I don’t like professional sports that much though.

I’ve been to three away games as a student (Mich. St. 05, Michigan 07, and Ohio State 08). I know what it’s like. I was even kicked (totally unprovoked) by a Mich. student while exiting the Big House in 07. But I’ve never been stupid enough to sit in the opposing team’s student section.

Having been to away games I make a point of always being polite/courteous to opposing fans. It really pisses me off when I see students taunting/chanting obscenities at opposing fans outside the stadium. It’s stupid, classless, and a lot of times there are young kids around. I go out of my way to be as friendly and inviting as possible, because I know that all opposing fans probably will or already have encounter(ed) more than a few a—holes. And I want them to leave PSU thinking “Man, those guys were really classy. I’d love to go to a game there again,” no matter who they’re rooting for – Syracuse, Ohio State, heck, even Michigan. That was the way I felt when I left OSU last season, even though I was surrounded by OSU alumni where I was sitting.

All that said, I still stand by my earlier comment – If you’re rooting against PSU in the PSU student section, you deserve everything you get short of being physically attacked. If it ruins their game experience, if they have to leave the section, if they have to leave the game, so be it. They don’t belong there and they should have sat somewhere else.

If I had my way they build a wall around ala Escape From New York.

When I jump and scream and yell bad words in my living room, my actions “don’t bring shame” because I’m in my living room. The Student Section is the student bodies living room. Not a student’s living room, with all do respect.

But hey, if you guys can all get together and change the rules regarding conduct and figure out a way to police yourselves I’m all for it. It is, after all, your section. But until then, it remains mob rule, that’s way it’s always been, for better or for worse.