As the home opener nears at Beaver Stadium on Saturday, the calendar turns over to another year of football and for me that’s Season 3 NT — no tickets.
Our 22 consecutive years as season ticket holder ended after the 2021 season.
If you count four years as students, that’s a quarter century of games inside the stadium, an abundance of memories and milestones with many feelings and traditions hardwired as a result. Many people have invested much more time (and money) as Penn State fans, and some die-hard fans might never even have attended a game in person.
All of them can be right with their respective approaches, and they deserve respect for however they spend their money. No judgment here.
For me, not purchasing season tickets was the culmination of a long con — having worked several years at dropping hints about what we could do with our Saturdays if we spent a few less hours inside the world’s fourth-largest stadium. We still tailgate, meeting friends at the same place we have for the past two decades. But, because we live a short drive from campus, we have the luxury of heading home when our friends start heading toward the stadium.
It was a hard sell, though. Thankfully, the implementation of pay-for-play made my argument a little easier.
If the players were able to make donations to charity because of the compensation they received for being Penn State football players, well, then the athletic department certainly did not need my Nittany Lion Club donation and ticket fees to support those players’ scholarships.
The pitch was we could afford another brief weekend vacation with the money not spent on tickets. The reality is we’ve spent a bit more time with our dog and grandchildren. We’ve cleaned up leftovers, pots and pans from the tailgate while flipping between the radio and TV pregame shows. We’ve typically settled into our chairs right around kickoff time.
The coming upgrades to Beaver Stadium do not make me long for what we’re missing, either.
Oh, we’ll get in for a game or two this season, but all the upgrades — concessions, concourses, escalators, scoreboards, ribbon boards and wifi — do not factor into that decision. In fact, no topic related to Penn State sports makes me feel as old as the planned Beaver Stadium upgrades.
Better bathrooms? OK, but it’s just a business trip and those troughs always seemed efficient. Premium food? That’s nice, but that’s more of a restaurant thing for me. Wider concourses? Sure, also nice, but there’s a bit of a superhero feel and related rush with finding the best, quickest way to wind in and out of the mass of humanity and get back outside.
When it’s all done, it’ll be a better Beaver Stadium, and the importance of per cap sales, premium spaces and more user friendly amenities is not lost on me. It’s big business, and the stadium can do more for Penn State Athletics if it’s improved.
An improved Beaver Stadium just won’t be my Beaver Stadium — the one that Fran Fisher and George Paterno made sound special before I ever had a chance to see it in person. It won’t be the one (and hasn’t been for years) when the someone in the student section would catch a ball after it went through the uprights and then work with others to toss it up the stands and over the top of the stadium. It won’t be (and, again, hasn’t been for years) the one where two tickets could work for a four-person family if two people exited at halftime and two different people reentered.
Honestly, that nostalgia was part of my sales pitch for not buying tickets.
By dropping our tickets, we were simply making room for some other folks to get into the place and make their own memories. They’ll get the rush when the Blue Band drumline starts its cadence. They’ll see players do things that bring 100,000-plus people to their feet in unison. It’ll be great.
Meanwhile, we’ll make memories while watching from home, appreciating the energy and pageantry from afar. Maybe we’ll make a trip to catch a game at some other notable college football venue. Or maybe we’ll even go to a small college game in person as a change of pace.
Honestly, we’re just starting to find our stride in Season 3 NT, and it’ll be exciting to see what this season brings.
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