If you’ll recall, I said I wasn’t sure if I’d do Did You Notice every week when I did it after the first home of the season.
Well, here we are. It’s time for the seventh (and final 2025) installment of things I noticed about the gameday experience inside Beaver Stadium.
Did you notice:
• Penn State acknowledged Kaytron Allen breaking the career rushing record. It was a no-brainer of a decision to do just that but I appreciate how Penn State waited until after the drive to really let fans relish in the moment.
I believe that record means the most to Penn State fans among individual accolades and it’s taken 15 years for Evan Royster to be bumped off the top spot. However, that pales in comparison to the 28 years it took for Royster to take it from Curt Warner and that’s about the same it took for Warner to take the record from Lenny Moore. (Some guy named Michael Poorman wrote the article in The Daily Collegian that week. I wonder what happened to him.)
•TER-RY! TER-RY!
• For real, that was my favorite part of the night. Seeing how Penn State has embraced Terry Smith especially after his emotional press conference this week. Penn Staters will always look after Penn Staters. I don’t think he will be the head coach next year but I do think last night cemented the fact he needs to be on the staff next year for how the community has rallied around him.
• I am somewhat surprised that the 409 pin snuck its way onto the field, given the blowback Penn State men’s hockey got the time it put 409 stickers onto its helmets years ago. Smith, a former player coached by Joe Paterno and who posted about his coach on Instagram this week, is appealing to a subset of Penn State boosters who have been vocal about honoring Paterno’s legacy. Many of whom wanted to hire the coach standing on the opposite sideline last night, who did not have his team ready to play. Paterno’s legacy has divided Penn State since 2011 and while Smith put the pin on with no ill intent, it does unnecessarily dust up all kinds of emotions. From the PR standpoint, Penn State has been cautious about that. It took several seasons for Penn State to show Paterno’s likeness on the video boards again. And while it’s a number that means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, the coaching search is about the future. That also can’t be forgotten.
• This may seem obvious, but Penn State may have worn its blue jerseys with a Nike swoosh on them for the last time. Penn State will wear white against Rutgers and it is a bit of a crapshoot on which color they would wear in the bowl game – if they play in one.
• The north endzone jumbotron was out for much of the final two minutes before halftime and returned for the start of the second half. I can’t remember a time when the scoreboard completely went dark like that.
• For the past few seasons, a student has snuck a stuffed Simba into the stadium and is often shown when the remix of the Lion King theme song plays at kickoffs. I have grown fond of that little moment and I hope that tradition is passed down through Nittanyville over the years. Now if someone can just find out what really happened to the old Linebacker U banner that went missing around 2020.
• I am making an unofficial SSSWS award. The first-ever Penn State Athletics Advertisers of the Year Award goes to Highmark. Each game this season, they activated various graphics packages fit for each game. On Saturday, they used their time to encourage people to donate to Unhungry.org. At times, I feel like I may be the only person paying attention to things like that but it’s noticeable and sets a bar for all other advertisers in the stadium.
• Of course, it was the final home game of the season. Average attendance was unsurprisingly lower in 2025 than 2024. In 2025, Penn State averaged 107,093 per game. In 2024, it averaged 108,379. In total, 749,654 was the total attendance for 2025, which equated to 8,998 fewer people (or tickets scanned?) inside of the stadium than last season. The most attended game of the year was Oregon and 103,818 for FIU was the lowest.
• Shoutout to whoever made the call to play the full version of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” at the two-minute timeout. Got me excited for Christmas. There was also a ton of Santas in the stands this weekend.
• Several TVs were tuned into the Penn State men’s basketball game, which tipped off at 4 p.m. I don’t know that I ever remember people watching Penn State basketball at a tailgate before, in part because this was the latest week of a home Penn State night game since at least 2007, maybe ever.
• You crashed the blog yesterday. Around the time Allen broke the career rushing record, we set a record for most concurrent visitors on the site and then crashed the site for a few minutes. Saturday’s traffic levels outpaced several months back in 2023 when we started the blog and I appreciate all five of you who logged onto the site yesterday. For real, we really appreciate all of you who have helped this blog grow. The season isn’t over and there will certainly be more to talk about this year but the blog, podcast and rest of the media empire has become something I enjoy so much. Plus, I like hanging out with Steve too.
What did you notice? What’s the best part of the gameday experience? What’s the worst part? Shoot me a note at darian@stuffsomerssays.com and we might chat about it on this week’s podcast.
