What The White Out Means To Me

Somewhere out there, there’s a couple – or well at least one person from that couple  – that regrets selling that ticket. 

On a crisp autumn night in October of 2016, our friend group had started our walk to Beaver Stadium from our lot behind Medlar Field and our friend Kelly Brown didn’t have a ticket. She was fine with that. She was just happy to be in State College with her friends on Penn State’s most special football weekend of the year. 

But there was this couple, clearly very deep into their tailgate festivities if you catch my drift, that was fighting about lord knows what by the bus stop on Porter Road. The man in that couple grabbed the ticket out of the woman’s hand and screamed, “TWENTY-FIVE BUCKS FOR ONE, FIFTY FOR TWO.” 

Kelly said, “Are you serious?” 

And that was that. 

That ticket was worth more than 25 bucks but the man didn’t care — or more likely wasn’t in the state to know the value of the ticket. But the deal was made. Kelly whipped out 25 bucks. Some poor couple wasn’t going to the White Out game. Kelly Brown was. Grant Haley would score. Penn State would win. Ohio State would lose.

And that’s the beauty of the White Out. You just never know what’s going to happen. 

For the 19th time, Penn State fans will dress in white as the Nittany Lions take the field against Iowa on Saturday. And the magic, the experience, the feeling, the emotion, the intensity will all come crashing down at the corner of Curtin and Porter for what truly makes both college football and Penn State so special. 

You’ve had the same exact conversation. You tell someone you’re a Penn State football fan and they respond with the question.

“What’s the White Out like?” 

I think the phrase “You just have to experience it for yourself” gets thrown around and overused a lot.

The White Out is one of those “You just have to experience it for yourself.” 

A few years after that 2016 White Out – maybe even the next year – we were once again with a similar group of friends waiting to leave our parking spot, still behind Medlar, when we noticed a group of guys hanging out by a white rental van – the ones that seat 10 or so people –  wearing Washington State shirts.

What were Washington State fans doing here in this cow field waiting to get on the road after a Penn State football game? State College, Pennsylvania is nowhere close to Pullman, Washington and I assure you that the Cougars were not the opponent that evening. 

They wanted to experience the White Out. 

This was a group of guys who flew all the way to Happy Valley for this one game that had nothing to do with their team’s game, giving up one of their sacred Saturdays to experience one of our sacred Saturdays. 

The White Out is what makes Penn State football so special but on a grander scale it was what makes college football and makes college football Saturdays so special. We all have our sports bucket list items, and your thing, the White Out that you get to experience every year, is on somebody else’s list.

College football is beautiful to me for so many reasons that have nothing to do with what happens on the field.

There are certain traditions in college football that I still want to experience. I want to eat fried foods at the Texas State Fair amidst the Red River Rivalry. I want to see the march on – and flyovers – between the Midshipmen and Cadets. I want to sing Petty at the end of the third quarter in The Swamp.

I’ve experienced what the Big Ten has to offer with “Jump Around,” Michigan’s entrance, even Iowa’s wave and the rest. 

But I assure you: There is nothing like the White Out. 

It’s a sea of people, families and friends coming together around a 120-yard by 53-1/3 yard grass lot for three and a half specific hours in a state land-locked in a country located on a continent on top of a tiny pebble hurtling through space at thousands of miles per hour.

Their voices and their attire acting as one.

The purpose is clear: To help a bunch of college students most of them have never met, will never meet, win a sport that some guy made up like 130 years ago. 

It’s crazy. It’s nuts. And it may not be that deep. It may just be another football game in the money-machine that is college athletics.

But to some, myself included, it kind of is that deep.

I’m not sure if she was serious but another friend of ours who didn’t go to Penn State went to her first White Out a few seasons back. I asked her what she thought and she replied, “It was a life-changing experience.”  

The insanity and the beauty to it all is so special, so unique and sorta cult-ish that you can’t help but be wrapped up in it.

It’s an amazing thing that is Penn State’s thing. It’s Penn State’s tradition. Attempts to replicate it become the Marshmallow Magic to Lucky Charms, the Pranks to Trix or the Fruit Spins to Froot Loops. 

It just doesn’t work.

You only get seven Saturdays in the fall, if you’re lucky, inside a college football stadium. And that’s if you’re lucky enough to cheer for a Power Five school, lucky enough to have season tickets and lucky enough to not have a wedding on a college football Saturday. 

There’s something warm. There’s something comforting. There’s something poetic about college football Saturdays in this country. From an expanded lens, they are a Rockwellian portrait of a college town, a glimpse into the collegiate spirit at its most heightened level.

You get to see your friends you haven’t seen in a while, you get to experience games with your family. You make friends with your seat neighbors and enemies with those wearing the wrong colors.

The air has a certain feel to it. Beer has this certain perfect chill and the taste of a hot dog right off the grill always hits always the spot on a college football Saturday.

But there are some college football Saturdays that just feel different. 

And to me, that’s the beauty of the White Out. 

It’s the only guaranteed Saturday that feels different to Penn State fans. 

Even in the losses, those games are more memorable, more intense, more impactful than any of those other Saturdays. 2018’s edition of the White Out featured the longest eight minutes of fandom as a Penn State fan that I can remember. Miles Sanders scores a touchdown, Penn State’s up on the Buckeyes, 26-14. Then it slips to 26-21. And then it flips to 27-26. And Sanders fails to convert on fourth and five.

Yet for every ounce of pain that you feel, you’re rewarded with 2007’s beat down of Notre Dame, 2013’s overtime thriller against Michigan or 2021’s celebration of a little bit of normalcy in a 28-20 win over Auburn. 

“Everyone’s got a white T-shirt,” Guido D’Elia, the father of the White Out, once said of the origin of Saturday’s tradition.

It may have been just that at the beginning but Saturday is now so much more than just a bunch of people wearing white T-shirts. It’s grown into this moment that Penn Staters should be lucky and proud to call their own. 

It’s now about a unifying, connecting experience that is so loud you can’t hear your wife next to you. It’s a feeling so intense that even the fastest of roller coasters can’t recreate the feeling.

The White Out is the culmination of all of the passion for Penn State wrapped in a white blanket, producing ear-ringing noise levels, a little bit of anxiety and a lot of fun.

It’s magical. It’s brilliant. It’s perfect. 

Most of all, it’s Penn State’s. 

So if you’re lucky enough to be inside Beaver Stadium around 7:40 p.m. on Saturday, stop for a moment. Take it in. 

Don’t take it for granted. But just take it in.

Of the seven Saturdays in the fall, or the one Saturday this year, or that one Saturday in your lifetime, you should cherish the one if it comes with the White Out. 

Do buy that ticket or don’t sell that ticket or do give up your Saturday in Pullman for a weekend in State College. Do go with your annoying Penn State relative that is always talking about it or don’t forget to add it to your bucket list and make sure you cross it off.

I assure you that the White Out is worth it.  

If you’ve enjoyed this content, please consider supporting StuffSomersSays.com.

Share This Article