Gameday at a BIG 10 Power
By: Lucas Mitchell, FM88 Sports
Huntington, W.Va – This past Saturday, I traveled to a place a six-hour drive away. State College, Pennsylvania, also known as Happy Valley. This land is where Penn State University is located. The Penn State Nittany Lions hosted our Marshall Thundering Herd in a football contest last Saturday, and I went to experience such an affair.
I woke up at 7 am and had to leave around 8 am. I wore all green to ruin the Nittany Lions’ stadium theme of a stripe out of Nittany navy and white. During the six-hour trip on the way to State College, I saw lots of mountains. No substantial cities passed, just Altoona, PA, being the biggest area. To be quite honest, I loved the scenery; though the way I came through to State College, driving on a mountain and across many miles, the mountains were parallel. It was a fantastic view for about two hours of the trip.
Let this be known that there is literally nothing outside of State College. Nothing. This was something I had already known, but if you ever take the trip that I did, just know there is nothing outside of it. You twist through some mountains, then boom, college campus. A huge college campus at that. Penn State’s campus is the sixth biggest in the US! And somehow, with all that campus space, it was still impossible to find a parking spot on Saturday. I ended up parking at a building on campus and had a 20-minute walk to the stadium. On the way to the campus that I came in, the stadium was the first thing I saw. And man, that thing was large, and it looked spectacular.
It’s about an hour before game time, and I am ready to flash my ticket to get into the game. But in a stadium that seats 106,304, trying to get all those people into only four gates is a tough task. I would say it looked like cattle trying to get back into their pen, except it would be like 10,000 of them and not 50. During the slow process of getting into the stadium, I heard a Penn State student say, “I didn’t even know there was such a thing as Marshall fans. I didn’t think they existed.” A silly comment from the student, and I would like to see him in Huntington, West Virginia, this Saturday when thousands of Marshall fans will be at The Joan. I was sitting in the lower bowl of the ever-expanding Beaver Stadium. In the section for Penn State season ticket holders because I bought my tickets online.
And all the folks in the season ticket section were extremely nice, let me add. In fact, the people I was sitting next to were from West Virginia! Maybe because of what was going on in the game, but I was surprised everyone was so nice because I was expecting many rude Penn State fans. I still don’t have my mind made up on whether Penn State fans are overly nice just because of the situation where I was sitting and how the game was.
But that crowd was electrifying! Of the 108,000+, you could not hear yourself think for that first half. The student section was full and looked so cool. By the second half, the student section had dispersed into the streets of the campus, but that first half gave me a feel for how hard it must be to play on the road as a player. Just a cool stadium experience all around.
I ended up coming back to campus at 2 am Sunday morning and looked back at the incredible 18-hour day I just had. The 12 hours of traveling was so well worth it for an experience like that. It was everything I expected and so much more! I wished for a better outcome for the Herd, but still a great time nonetheless.