Revisiting Penn State Football

 I used to be a rabid Penn State football fan. I would take a 3 to 4 hour drive to the game and then reverse the drive back even after night games. I bought and wore a lot of Penn State apparel. And I would be too angry at mistakes made by players or the refs and too sad when they lost. A lot of things in my life revolved around Penn State Football until the revelations and the resulting disillusionment as well as a challenge from a former minister.

And so for a long time I had no interest in going to any game until the daughter told us that she and her family were going to the West Virginia game over Labor Day weekend. Then I wanted to go in order to spend time with her, the grandchildren, and the son in-law in another setting than visiting them at their house.

The wife and I were told that we had to wear white shirts to the game because of the section in which we were sitting. And I was prohibited from wearing my Not Penn State sweatshirt to the game. BTW, the Not Penn State apparel is not a protest against Penn State; it is statement that distinguishes UPenn from Penn State. The 2 schools are often confused.

That meant that I had a challenge. I had to get a white shirt that could not be confused with a Penn State shirt. And so I found one; it was a UPenn shirt pictured below:  

BTW, I picked a UPenn shirt because I follow the UPenn basketball team during college basketball season. I never attended UPenn nor could I ever qualify to. But having grown up in the Philadelphia area, I was a Big 5 fan and Penn was my favorite team in the Big 5. And so now I was ready to attend the game while complying with the daughter's restrictions.

It had been a long time since I attended a Penn State game and a lot of things have changed since then. In the good old days, the students directed what could be called the show. The band provided the music and the cheerleaders directed the crowd on what to cheer. And there was the traditional late attendance by many seniors. The crowd energy depended primarily on the combination of the performance level of the football team and the quality of their opponent. But the great thing about the game is that the students were in charge and the focus of attention throughout the whole game.

I quickly learned upon entering the stadium around an hour early that that was no longer the case. What was blaring from the stadium speakers was music, at least that was my guess. It had the rhythmic beat of rap or hip-hop--btw, I don't know the difference between the two. And that steady beat was suppose to get the student section excited and respond in a uniform way.

The irony of ironies here was that on a college campus where diversity is king, there was no diversity in the pregame music blaring from the stadium speakers. And except for the Penn State fight songs played by the band and the halftime show, there was very little diversity in the music during most of the whole game. And even the halftime show did just a little to add variety to the music being played.  

The volume of the pre game music was so loud that when the band took the field, I could barely hear them play. The inability to hear the band well was not just because the stadium pre game music however. An additional factor included my age. After all, I am in my 70s. And I couldn't see the football when it was thrown or kicked either. In addition, because our seats were high up and we were walking up steps that had no railing, the wife asked people in the press box if we could take the elevator down rather than walk down the steps after the game. She asked for that help because I was unsure that I could walk down the steps safely because of my troubles with balance. And the highest compliments go to the Penn State employees who helped us take the elevator. They were a source of a great and friendly help. That was greatly appreciated.

I guess what I am getting at 'things ain't what they used to be' at Penn State home football games. What used to be an event that centered on a football team with the audience participation being directed by the students, has become a show--The Greatest Show In College Football--where the stadium, by virtue of the volume of the music being played, is the director and the students, who are suppose to be getting an education, follow along as pawns with the student section mindlessly following the rhythm of the music. 

When I first saw the accolade, The Greatest Show In College Football, I thought it was like my self-proclaimed AMAR (Almost Master of Arts in Religion) title. But I was wrong; it was a title given to the Penn State home games by a sports magazine. In either case, we need to be aware here of the first word that I used to teach my students in my Introduction to Information Science and Technology class at a Penn State branch campus. That word was 'tradeoffs.'  And what a tradeoff is are the costs and benefits involved any choice that could be made. Certainly the students appeared to have a lot fun in the new system. But the costs are that the students are no longer to focus because they are no longer leading the rest of the fans; they are following the lead of the stadium along with the rest of the fans. 

The Penn State home football games are no longer to be thought of as just a game; rather, they are an experience. That is similar to how a college education has become less and less an educational opportunity and more of an experience. The students in the student section fail to see that they have become mindless automatons. And in so doing, they have begun to embrace a passive authoritarian role at the games. It is a role that includes a voluntary conformity to whatever the stadium was telling them to do through the music being played. In fact, the music being played was used as a drug to produce a conditioned response. And the simplicity of the music being played by the stadium tends to lead one to an embracing a simplistic view of life.

Even if I had no problems with going up and down the stadium steps, hearing the band play, seeing the football--which needs to be enlarged-- during the game, and sitting behind someone who was too tall to see above, I don't think I'll go to another Greatest Show in College Football event again. That is because I miss the good old days when the focus was on the game and the flawed cheerleaders and band were the only ones who directed us fans, including old wheezers like myself, on how we could contribute to the team's efforts through cheering. So what if some of the students were apathetic and many of the seniors arrived notoriously late. At least the games back then were honest events. And in our current world of hype, honest events have become an endangered species.