Beaver Stadium Madness

We’re baaaaack! That’s right, Penn State showed on Saturday that they are truly back, by beating Ohio State in a 17-10 instant classic on a drizzly night here in State College in front of a national television audience. The atmosphere lived up to its billing, with electricity “literally seeping through the television screen,” as I saw it put in one article online. The unbelievably rowdy and white-clad student section easily topped 110 dB repeatedly throughout the entire game, leading to several mistakes by the Buckeye offense, and on several occasions the entire stadium was literally shaking from the entire crowd of over 111,000 bouncing up and down to “Zombie Nation” being blared over the loud-speakers. Daniel taped the game and Frame TiVo’d it, so I’m gonna make sure to watch it at some point, to get a feel for how it was on TV.
But not all was right on Saturday night, at least not early on. Frame, Monahan, Bob and I all left the tailgate about 45 minutes before kickoff (I was TRYING to get them to leave much earlier, sigh), and we got in line at Gate A (the student section gate). When we were really close to the front of the line, the stadium staff shut the gates for the senior line, leaving all of us rather shocked and annoyed, since this has never happened before. So we move over to the next line, and after a minute or two, they shut that gate too. Now people are really starting to get upset, and a riot is only a spark away from happening. So now the many, many hundreds of students that are still in line suddenly start pushing and shoving trying to get in through the sophomore gate, which is still open at this point. The ticket agents, instead of handing out tickets to people like all of us that have student season ticket vouchers, are just waving people through and telling them to go up the ramp to the upper deck. So we go up there, and try to walk up the stairs in the senior section, except we’re not allowed to because we don’t have actual tickets. The agent there was asking us how we even got into the stadium, so, exasperated and frustrated, we try to explain to him what had happened so far, that there were hundreds of us that weren’t given tickets and were just told to go up there and find a seat. Well, even if the section weren’t already full we weren’t gonna be allowed to go up there. So we try to watch a little bit of the game from the walkway between the upper and lower decks, but that quickly becomes a very uncomfortable situation, with it now being so crowded with angry ticket-holders who, like us, were being denied seats that we paid for, that we could hardly move at all. We decide to try to gradually work our way out to the concourse, but that takes a good 10-15 minutes to make it the 50 feet or so. Some people were even needing medical attention from being crushed, it was so bad. Then we walk back downstairs to the gate and, frustrated and bordering on irate at this point, ask the ticket agents, “What are we supposed to do?!? You didn’t give us tickets, so we’re not being allowed to sit in the section where we have season tickets.” Then the guy tells us that because our season tickets are in reality only “vouchers” and not actual tickets, that if we get to the stadium too late and they’ve run out of tickets (like they apparently did Saturday night), that we’re simply supposed to “turn around and go home.” What a load of bull! We paid good money for these “vouchers” so that we could have supposedly guaranteed seats somewhere in the student section. So at long last someone tells us about a place where we can go where we won’t die and won’t be kicked out, in the student section, in the corner of the end zone at the top of the first deck in a patio/picnic area. That actually wasn’t a bad place to watch the game from, and it only got better as the game progressed, as people gradually left to go elsewhere, so that by late in the 4th quarter, we were at the railing with nobody in front of us and a fantastic view of the action. But it was the start of the 2nd quarter before we got there, so we missed the entire 1st quarter because of the ticket fiasco. At that point we were all sure that there would be a riot following the game regardless of who won. Still, none of us can believe the utter incompetence on the part of the stadium ticket staff (or more likely somewhere in the stadium administration, no individual ticket agent was to blame really), the whole thing was an embarrassment. How or why do you run out of tickets? By overselling the stadium, the student section in particular! Apparently our “tickets” are next to worthless, our seats might be sold right out from under us. I’m gonna be writing a good long email to the stadium people about this sometime this week. I didn’t do it right away on Sunday because I wanted to wait until I cooled down about it a bit.
But despite all that, it was still worth it to be a part of that atmosphere and that game. If we had been blown out we certainly would’ve asked for our money back, but instead we were treated to one of the very best football games of the entire year. Winning has a way of making everything better. 🙂
When the final horn sounded, students mobbed the field, and nobody in the stands left for a good 20 minutes, which is very unusual, but everyone just wanted to savor the moment and celebrate. There had been talk of tearing down the goalposts and carrying them down College Avenue if we won, and to prevent that there were armed police officers standing guard shoulder-to-shoulder around both goalposts. After a time the PA announcer asked the students to leave the field, at which point the police started using pepper spray, tear gas and mace to disperse the crowd and get them off the field. On my long walk back to White Course I noticed a helicopter doing circles around downtown, no doubt on the lookout for any potential riots. There were also hundreds of police in full riot gear, prepared to take action should a riot break out, all along Curtin Rd near the stadium, and downtown along College Ave and Beaver Ave, but fortunately nothing of the sort happened; the PSU fans managed to celebrate in a relatively responsible and non-destructive manner. 🙂
Oh, and ESPN College GameDay on Saturday morning was a cool experience. The crowd was huge, and there were so many signs around that really no individual person could really be seen on camera. Frame had a sign that read “The Buck$ Stop Here,” which got on camera several times, so if you saw that, I was right next to there. I was also right near a piece of a mannequin that was floating around behind Lee Corso’s head, if you noticed that. 🙂 While I don’t think my face ever got on camera, I think I saw my shoulder on the big screen once, hehe.
All day Sunday I was still exhausted, and my voice was still recovering from being shouted hoarse by the end of the game, so about the only thing I accomplished apart from going to church (and being hardly able to sing) and the evening Bible study, was taking a good mid-afternoon nap. I can’t even remember the last time I took a nap!
My test in Meteo 501 on Monday evening went relatively well I think. I mean, I got answers that seemed to make sense on all the problems, though I’m not totally sure I used the right methods. Oh well. That concluded my crazy stretch of exams and grading, so now it seems like my brain is on holiday or something, I’ve barely been able to focus on anything for more than about 2 seconds all day, it seems like.
As I’ve mentioned to some of you, I’ve started feeling like I need to broaden my culinary horizons, when it comes to making food for myself. For most of my time here so far my self-prep diet has consisted of sandwiches (deli, tuna, etc), frozen burritos, easy mac, ramen and cheese crisps (which are kinda like quesadillas). Last week I tried to make a hamburger for myself on the stove (and wasn’t too successful), so tonight I decided to be adventurous and try to make some Hamburger Helper, which went surprisingly well. I know a monkey can probably make hamburger helper, but I’ve gotta start somewhere. Baby steps. 🙂
I also took advantage of my respite in immediate homework tonight by cleaning my room. It was really starting to get on my nerves how messy everything was, and how I couldn’t find any of the important things I needed to find. Also, it hadn’t been cleaned since I moved in, so it was about time. There’s no truth to the rumor that the timing of my room-cleaning had anything to do with my parents’ upcoming visit this weekend to State College. 😉