STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — The nonfan.
The student who wears her only Northwestern T-shirt to every football game she attends, who has never worn one of those stupid “N” tatoos on her face and who wouldn’t know if she bumped into our starting quarter back on Sheridan Road. What’s his name?
When you visit Penn State, you don’t expect to see many fans as apathetic as me.
With 100,353 fans at the game — making Beaver Stadium the third biggest city on game days in a state devoted to football — you expect the game to be way more wild and way more fun.
Nope. Penn State fans show up because there is nothing else to do in central Pennsylvania. But the mood was so dull Saturday that following an Amish buggy down the highway would have been more exciting. And it would have been much more exciting to watch the game at at Ryan Field. (No, I’m not confused — I mean the Ryan Field where NU plays). More Evanstonians may go to the library than the stadium on game days, but Ryan Field has been a surprisingly fun place to watch games this year.
Penn State has a ridiculously big marching band, leotard-clad baton twirlers, a big white “S” in the seniors section and a mascot who flips around like a gymnast. They’ve got blue and white beachballs that the security folks at Ryan Field would pop in a second. Penn State has remnants of being a football powerhouse, but the Nittany Lion’s costume is getting thin and very ’80s, especially its little scarf, while Willie’s looking a whole lot more modern and energetic.
And really, what’s a Nittany, anyway?
You see old men (well, not as old as Joe Pa, but they might know what a Nittany is) in Penn State jackets who don’t bother going back to their seats after bathroom break and instead sit next to a stadium TV, yelling to anyone who will listen for coach Paterno’s resignation. The fans just shrug when they do the wave, and the students don’t fill their section. With five minutes left in the second half and with their team only down by seven, they started picking up their Capital One Bowl bleacher cushions and filtering out to their cars. (Not everyone in Pennsylvania drives buggies. Just most.)
It has gotten so bad the school’s student newspaper has to write editorials pleading with frustrated fans not to boo the team. Oh, we know how much students listen to what the newspaper says. But when their quarterback and former big man on campus, Zack Mills, got sacked, you could hear supposed fans yelling, “Stay on the ground, Mills!” Even the Ohio State fans, our old buddies, aren’t that immature.
At least NU can get excited about winning, even if it takes us by surprise. At the Ohio State game, I clenched my hands until the overtime ended and we could yell and scream in Buckeye fans’ faces. I wasn’t sure what to do when we won, though. I asked if we’d rush the field. Next time we should ask our friends at every other school how to take the goalposts down.
This was the first time NU beat Penn State on their turf. The Wildcats started jumping around on the sidelines when they realized they had won, as much as guys their size can. Jonathan Fields made my day by singing and skipping his way to the locker room, and the last Penn State fans to leave the stadium could hear the team cheering in the locker room.
Fields has the idea. And as we win more, I’m not the only one learning to be a fan.
Herron’s simply amazing, even though he was a bit mixed up about what quarter he returned to the game. I heard Tim McGarigle being credited for tackles a ridiculous number of times while sitting in the press box. Would you teach me to tackle like that so I stop letting girls run by me in rugby?
Maybe if we keep winning I’ll start buying those dumpy purple sweatshirts. Then you guys who were raised rooting for another team and wear their colors in our student section better teach me how to road trip and tailgate.
But Brett, if I run into you on the street, I still might not know who you are. You’re lucky, though. At least I don’t want you to be trampled on the field.
The Amish wouldn’t approve of that.
Reach Kristin Barrett at [email protected].
