Every person who attends a Penn State football game has a story and, with 106,572 (#107k) seats in Beaver Stadium, people at the same game in different locations can have vastly different experiences.
Plus, with a mix of one-time visitors and others who have attended games for decades, the seat location and what happens around it can sometimes be as much a part of the gameday story as the opponent or outcome.
My time as a Penn State football season ticket holder ended just before last season, but through 30-some years of games there were five primary locations for my seats — or at least five that offered the most stories. Here are some of those:
SE (Student Section)
My first Penn State game was the first night game in Beaver Stadium history: Sept. 6, 1986, vs. Temple.
As an excited freshman, I found a seat behind the goalposts, level with the top of the portal where the team enters the field and on the end of a row. I was wearing a white football jersey with blue numbers — a jersey that had been procured and never returned from a neighboring rival high school.
A few minutes before kickoff, the student who had most recently worn that jersey in high school walked up the aisle. He was a freshman as well. He walked past me, then walked back down to ask about the jersey and how it was acquired. We talked briefly and he offered me $20 to give it him.
So, I pulled it off, handed it over and pocketed the $20.
Life as a college football fan was off to a good start, and I spent much of that season and the next in that seating area … without ever seeing that other student again. It was the perfect place to potentially catch kicks after they went through the uprights (there were no nets or even an upper deck in those days), to see the team, to pass the Lion and so much more.
EAU (Student Section)
By junior and senior years, the open-seating approach for the student section enabled us to move toward the east side of the stadium a bit and we appreciated the opportunity.
By that point our core fan group was two couples, and it was my job to get in early and get the seats. Yes, this was back in an era when you could do that. The fill every seat, row by row silliness was years away from implementation and an early arriving fan with a blanket could get some choice seats.
Plus, my approach was not to get closer to the field. When others entered and went down toward the field, I made a beeline up, regularly getting seats just above the upper portal entry area. That ensured nobody would walk in front of us during a game and it provided a nice perch for people watching.
You could watch other students wander in and watch them sneak in friends and family members from the east side. In addition, one group of students, we pegged them as super-smart seniors or graduate students, offered their own approach to cheers, including: “Suppress Them, Suppress Them … Make Them Relinquish the Ball.”
Not all that snazzy, but good for the vocabulary test.
NAU, Row 90
Our first seats as a family were two tickets in the north end zone upper deck. The girls were young, probably 8 and 9, so we took turns taking them into the game — two at a time. Again, back when that was possible.
One of us would go for the first half with one daughter and one for the second half with the other. It was just enough time for their attention spans (and mine many weeks) and we could mix and match from week to week.
Tough wind in your face up there some games, but you could certainly see all the action.
The long walk to the 90th row was part of an early wellness program, and I was continually amazed by the older fans who struggled with the walk but made the trek every week. My plan at that age and in that health includes more TV and less stadium steps. Still it was impressive on their part.
WHU, Row 68
When we finally invested in four tickets, we moved to the west side of the stadium, closer to the action and cozier because people there showed up even more reliably than the folks high up in NAU. So, elbow room was at a premium.
Through numerous seasons there we were able to build enough familiarity with the regulars to kind of take attendance, and to know who around us would and would not be there at certain times. Plus, you got to watch other families grow and change. It was a nice neighborhood.
Seat size, especially that of visitors when some of the semi-regulars sold their seats became a challenge at times and that’s when we invested and had seat cushions installed. The initial ones with the back pushed use forward a bit, forcing us to be as kind as possible with our knees for the folks in front of us, but the cushions at least marked our space so it was not a race to sit back down after you had risen to your feet for a moment.
While there were few seasons with tough times that hindered turnout (and I always appreciate when folks even less loyal than me do not show up because it offers more legroom), the experiences there were generally good.
Plus, most visiting fans who showed up there were happy just to be in the stadium. They sported their colors and were respectful … something our folks did not always return in kind. The one time I had to defend an Ohio State fan who was there with his 8-year-old son, wearing jerseys and just enjoying the game, still stands out. No fan wants to spend good money to go support his or her team only to be verbally berated by home fans.
SHU, Row 80
Our final location came in seats that produced a lot of stories over about a decade, starting with the fact that we could always honestly tell people we were in the very last row of the stadium — and generally enjoyed it.
We moved back up top because our best friends (the same folks from EAU as college juniors and seniors), had moved up there to get seatbacks and enjoyed the all-field view of the action. You can certainly see everything from up there, on and off the field.
It’s not close to the action, again a challenge for my attention span, but there was always action in the tailgate lots if things on the field got slow. You could see the band’s efforts really well, construction on the water tower over by the Office of Physical Plant, drones going airborne or then getting grounded, late-arriving fans driving up Porter Road somehow surprised that the lots were full minutes before kickoff. It was great.
Plus, it’s one of the last places to fill up for most games. And if attendance is off, that’s where people are not sitting. So, we could stand, pace, stretch our legs and watch first-time folks climb all the way to the top looking for their seats with one member of every party inevitably surprised that such seats existed. Or, they’d fumble the section numbers and have to move when someone with the correct seat showed up. That happened a lot because the signage was poor.
One couple and family came in different themed attire for every game. Another family’s daughter grew from a bouncy redheaded child to a high school student. It was a good neighborhood and a good run. Plus, the secret access that a handful of people knew about to get to the upper deck made it additionally fun.
Still, my attention span and NIL got the best of me. I figured if the players were making money on top of their scholarships, the athletic program was probably not in desperate need of my ticket money. So, we gave up the seats, freeing up the opportunity for someone else to start compiling their seat story — and for me to just watch from home.
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