#43 Penn State

State College, PA

Beaver Stadium October 19, 2019 Penn St 28 – Michigan 21 (ESPN Recap)

8th straight year with a business school boys trip to a bigtime game. We love college and we chose well! Evan, Stephen and I selected the white out at Penn State back in July as we had to thread the needle between some babies. The bar was high, expectations even higher, and Beaver Stadium came through on top. It is now the #1 tailgate and #1 in-game experience I have come across out of the first 43 stadiums I have attended. A few things broke our way:

1) Penn St was undefeated #7 ranked and Michigan was one-loss #16 ranked, which attracted GameDay to come to Happy Valley. These teams just as easily could have each lost 2 or 3 games and the energy would have been less.

2) The forecast for late October in Central PA was a bit scary (high 40s with wind and chance of rain), but it turned out to be 65 all day for the tailgate and low 50s with no wind or rain during the game.

3) The game came down to the wire.

4) KJ Hamlin (PSU WR #1) is the man

5) 110,668 people wearing white and 1 person wearing a black and orange Ok St Christmas tree sweater can make a lot of noise

Take a look at the video of the fans on the 4th and Goal from the 3 protecting a 7-pt lead at the top of this post...amazing!

The student section of Penn St is so much better than any other student section. It’s as loud and coordinated as most university’s bands. Sort of shocking to be honest how they can all thrust their white pompoms in the air at the perfect time, in unison, and make magic.

Getting to State College from South Florida isn’t easy and I had some bad luck on Thursday. After flying from PBI to DCA, I took a Lyft to IAD and had ~2 hours until my United flight into SCE. That flight was delayed six times before ultimately being cancelled 4.5 hours after the original scheduled departure time. With no real good Plan B options, I drew from my experience last month getting from Northwestern to Illinois and ordered a Lyft. To save the environment, I invited another member of the cancelled flight to join who's name is Geoff. Turns out that Geoff is an amazing human, alum, married to alum, with a daughter at the school, and is visiting all the way from Minneapolis for the white out. We got to know each other on the ride and I look forward to reconnecting at a Gophers game in the future.

Arrived after midnight and joined Evan and Stephen at Phryst where a band played Taylor Swift and The Killers on back to back songs. Friday, we ate at one of the Original Waffle Shops (at Geoff’s recommendation), walked to GameDay set to see Maria, Dez, and Pollack, hit the Creamery, then rallied to spend the rest of the night at Champs and The Den. Thanks to Drew for the hospitality. We love college.

Saturday, we began at Lot 17 for the tailgate, played a lot of cornhole, drank a lot of beers, explored, and had an amazing time playing stump, beer dye, head or tails, RPS, beer pong, and flip cup. That was just the tailgate. Next, we got to enjoy the best environment at a CFB I have ever seen, which also included a smooth PSU ML win. Despite passing on a 1:2000 bet offer that would have won, we did not catch a T-Shirt during the T-Shirt toss. We did however catch exactly one pitch of the ALCS G6 between the Astros and Yankees, which happened to be the last pitch of the game. WeAre!

October 17, 2009 Penn St 20 – Minnesota 0

Evan Royster was the ball carrier (Rarr-Rarrr!). Recruiting trip with Drew to his old stomping grounds. Tailgating cancelled due to the snow and a very poor attendance turnout. Bars were fun (Pickles, Den, Café 520). Evan Royster was the ball carrier (Rarr-Rarrr!). Wish I could make it to the 2019 version of PSU/Minny.