I can definitively count the number of stadiums that I have seen Penn State play in. It’s 15 college stadiums, nine NFL stadiums, the Rose Bowl, the Citrus Bowl and one MLB stadium.
I can even tell you the number of days of the week that I’ve seen Penn State play on. (It’s five. Wednesday and Sunday are missing from that collection.)
However, I can’t tell you two numbers. I can’t tell you exactly how many Penn State football games I’ve been to and because of that I can’t tell you how many different places I’ve sat around Beaver Stadium.
Growing up, my mom just took me to games whenever she could get us tickets, even if she probably didn’t have the money for it. I never had season tickets until I was in college but most of my memories of youth revolve around Saturdays in Happy Valley.
When Steve first approached me with this idea, it made me ponder those numbers and I wish I had kept better track of all of the locations around Beaver Stadium my mom could scrounge the cash for tickets for.
That number isn’t just a bunch of ticket stubs over the years, currently sitting in a dresser inside the spare bedroom at my mom’s house. It’s important memories of friends becoming family. It’s the first game you can remember, your first as a student or the game on the weekend you plan to propose to your girlfriend but you don’t want to do it after a loss so you’re more anxious when Penn State plays Georgia State than Ohio State but you can’t explain to her why.
Simply put, the views of Beaver Stadium are mile markers in your life. That is part of the beauty of what makes college football what it is.
Here are just some of those views for me.
WBU
When people ask me what my first Penn State game is, I say I don’t know because I was in the womb. When people ask me what my first memory of Penn State football is, I say this game.
I don’t remember the specific section or the specific seat location but I do remember it being up higher and in the corner. So my guess is WBU.
I also remember for the first time in my life, crying in my mom’s lap because I could finally understand what it meant when Penn State lost. I cried. And cried. And cried.
Of course, an undefeated season is a bit hard for an at-the-time 5 year old to understand. Yet, it is a bit ironic that my first view of Beaver Stadium that I can truly remember is watching Penn State lose to Minnesota on a last second field goal, effectively dashing my first favorite Penn State player Lavar Arrington’s hopes at a national title.
I think it’s rather symbolic of the relationship I’ve had in my lifetime as a Penn State fan. Always so close but yet so far away.
That feeling and that view has always lurked in the back of my mind.
Fast forward to 2019 and the loss against Minnesota in Minneapolis. Prince’s “1999” blaring after their upset win. And me, not crying, but instead incredibly pissed off, once again that Penn State had gotten so close, yet so far away.
EF, Row 17
For my generation of Penn State fans, I think 409 is still the “where did you sit” gold standard game. Everyone remembers their view.
In my senior year of high school, I had picked up a job at The Altoona Mirror in the sports department where I’d take phone calls and cover local high school sports. Through that, I made a friendship with Mike Boytim, who still works at the Mirror, and he would occasionally offer me his seats if he had to cover another assignment that day.
However, the stars aligned where I sat with him, his brother and my mom for that game. A game that had it all.
There are two distinct memories from this game. It was one of those games where you’d experience every season within a day. It had snowed, stopped, warmed up and got cold and snowed again — all by the time of the second half. Around that point, my mom asked some nearby Illinois fans if she could have a sip of their Fireball they had snuck in their flask. The first-hand embarrassment that every child feels with their parents was real.
The second memory isn’t necessarily of the field but Mike had a shift at the Mirror later that evening. Knowing that the game was going to come down to the final kick, he had begun his trot down the steps of that section but stopped to watch the impending climax to a wild game.
After the student section rushed to the middle behind the goal post, the Illini kicker doinked it, and I looked down to see Mike, who lifted his arms into the air, turned around, looked at me, smiled and then sprinted back down the tunnel in that section to make his shift.
The smoothness with which he celebrated and left the stadium will forever make me chuckle when I think of that memory.
SE, Row 2
To borrow a phrase from The Killers, my eager eyes were certainly opened in my first game as a Penn State student.
It was my second week on campus. I had just completed my first camp out at Nittanyville, quickly becoming the annoying freshman. I was decked out in my Penn State clothes, pom-poms in my hat and even my phone case was a blue and white Otterbox with the paw print logo on it. I had a dream seat, directly next to the tunnel where I’d get to watch the Nittany Lions run onto the field to take on Ohio.
This was it. This was why I wanted to go to Penn State so bad and had worked so hard in high school to make sure that I got in. Excitement doesn’t capture the feeling I had felt.
I was taking pictures of everything, largely in disbelief that I, who had sat relatively far back for most of my life, was in the second row, right next to the tunnel. It was time for the team’s grand entrance and my arm dangling over the rail, taking pictures.
And then someone bumped me. That bump caused my phone to fall out of my hand and fall flat against the ground.
There was my phone, laying in the tunnel as 100 or so football players were about to sprint out. The sheer panic of “How am I going to explain this one to my mom” raced over me.
By some miracle, I had caught the attention of Bill O’Brien’s personal police officer, and he tossed me the phone about 10 feet in the air. Not only was my phone fine, but it wasn’t being trampled by the entire 2012 roster.
That, along with a loss to the Bobcats, was my welcome to college football as a college student.
SJ, Row 1
By the following season, I had perfected holding on to my phone and perfected the Nittanyville sign-in process. The earlier you signed in, the earlier you got to pick your seats.
For much of the 2013 season, my group sat in the front row of SH, including the 2013 overtime thriller against Michigan.
There are certain games as a sports fan you can explicitly say took years off your life. That one took several for me.
When I think of my college years, this is the view that I think of — largely because we went through so many emotions in that seat. The pain of a loss to Blake Bortles and UCF and of course that Michigan win, really the hallmark of my student era.
There is a picture of me kneeling on the ground because I couldn’t take the energy that it took to stand, largely because I had slept out at Gate A every night during that weeklong.
Also, my body was crashing from the four Red Bulls and one Arnold Palmer I had consumed in the hours earlier.
I was so anxious during that game that I shredded the pom-pom all students got down to a size that I carried it in my wallet for several seasons after as a lucky charm. My junior and senior years I moved over to the customary Nittanyville executive suites in the home sideline corner.
But I’ll always have a special place in my heart for those seats.
NB, Row 22
Unfortunately, college isn’t forever and neither are the discounted seats that you get as a student.
However, I made sure that even on my journalism salary after college, my then-girlfriend-now-wife Anna and I would have season tickets.
Section NB, Row 22 has been our “home” ever since the 2016 season. We started with two tickets but added a third for her best friend Carly a few seasons ago which is now split between her and my mom.
Unless I’m forced to, I really plan on these being my seats forever. It is at the perfect part of the stadium where it begins to slope up so you can see over people’s heads but not too high that you feel removed from the action.
The seat neighbors have come and gone, including Bill, also a recent grad in 2016, who we ran into a few seasons later at another tailgate. We watched the 2016 Ohio State game with him and ran onto the field with him.
There’s also a mom and a daughter who is maybe a year or two older than me that have occupied the seats to my left for quite a while. I always give her and her mom a hug at the end of the season and after the 2019 season, I said “See you next year” and the mom replied “God willing.”
Of course COVID happened, and we didn’t see them in 2020. It was a great joy to see them in 2021. People you don’t really know but you go through these experiences that mean the world to you with them. The mom is moving this year but the daughter, a die-hard Mike Gesicki fan, will be there.
And I can’t wait to be back in those seats myself.
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