Beaver Stadium AKA You and Your 107,281 Best Friends

Hey everybody and welcome to the show! This week I had the opportunity to go to PSU's opening home football game where our very own Nittany Lions squared off against the Kent State Flashes!

Flashes are birds?

Kent State must have realized that they were doomed from the moment they saw the sheer amount of tailgaters surrounding the stadium. I never realized how big of a deal tailgating was until I saw the intramural fields across the road from East Campus already packed with people and flying flags by 9 AM. The game wasn't even scheduled to kick off until 3:30, so if you have ever wondered how committed Penn State fans are, on a scale from 1 to One Direction fans, Penn Staters are the fans still going to 1D concerts after Zayn left.

Anyway, when the time finally came to get ready for the game, all I could feel was an overwhelming sense excitement. I am lucky enough to be a part of the Blue Band, so my gameday experience does differ a bit from that of other fans. I also get a more behind the scenes look into Beaver Stadium. Every home football game the band parades down University Drive and enters the stadium via tunnel on the South side, and after passing by an enormous crowd of people, I found myself standing in the bowels of the stadium.

Mind you, this was my very first time ever being inside Beaver. This stadium has a carrying capacity of 107,282 people which is an insane amount of people when you think about it. To put it in perspective, a full Beaver Stadium has more people in it than the entire country of Aruba. MORE PEOPLE THAN AN ENTIRE COUNTRY. Aruba's population count as of 2015 was right around 104,000 recorded citizens. And there I was, in the tunnel, looking out at a wall of white shirts filling the Northern section of the stadium. It was more than a little intimidating.

On this particular Saturday, Beaver was not filled to capacity but still pulled in an impressive crowd of around 95,000 people. The game kicked off at 3:30 following a rousing pregame performance by the Penn State Blue Band, and I could bore you with a play by play analysis of the game, but all you really need to know is that we won 33-13, and that Joey Julius had THE most brutal block of all time on an important ball return by Kent State.

Joey Julius' impression of a brick wall

Although football is an important aspect of going to Beaver Stadium, what I was more impressed by was the atmosphere. There's nothing like being packed in like sardines with thousands of other people who are all synchronously invested in the game. Even now I can't describe the feeling.

The only bad things that I can think of are just minor inconveniences such as pricy foods and a redefining of personal boundaries. You get nice and cozy with the people sitting next to you by the end of the game.

In the end, I give the Penn State Gameday Experience 9 footballs out of 10. I think that even if you don't particularly like football, it is definitely worth it to make your way to a home football game if only for the view and atmosphere inside the stadium. 

Image courtesy of Kent State University
Video courtesy of Big Ten Network