With the Penn State wrestling team about to make history this weekend, here’s hoping fans and those associated with the program can enjoy it — and all the history and success that comes the rest of the season.
Seriously … just Enjoy, Enjoy!
For an aging, diminishing portion of people who might be Penn State fans, that exhortation from Manny Gordon would be good advice.
Gordon, who died in 2009, was the longtime Lackawanna County district forester who was able to prominently pitch his perspective on a Wilkes-Barre/Scranton TV station for decades. He was good for forestry, tourism and probably even good for the mental health of some part of the population long before mental health was something people talked about.
Gordon was a Penn State alumnus — and alumni and blue-and-white wrestling fans alike would be well served to embrace his mantra this weekend as Penn State hosts the Big Ten Wrestling Championships.
For a program that has had so much success the past decade or so, an opportunity for any kind of accomplishment or different success is rare. Penn State, which has never won the conference event at home, has that opportunity this weekend. Enjoy it.
Plus, with the Big Ten getting ready to scrap its rotational approach to the championships (when a different school hosts each year) in favor of a process that would allow potential host sites to bid to host the event, there’s a chance the campus flavor to the conference’s annual wrestling finale could change after this year. In the big-money world of college athletics, an event like the Big Ten Wrestling Championships that attracts dedicated fans would be a money maker for the conference and any host.
So, before it becomes something different, embrace it. Enjoy it.
In addition, the little seeding kerfuffle around all-everything standout Levi Haines offers an emotional, you’ve-done-our-guy wrong storyline for Penn State fans. Everyone in sports it seems, and especially so among wrestling fans, enjoys an us-against-them situation.
It’s really a molehill that some have made into a mountain — because if Haines is that good (and he is) he’ll defeat everyone in his weight class anyway. Especially at home in the Bryce Jordan Center. Haines righting the perceived wrong will play well in the team’s championship run, though. Enjoy it.
This is the culmination of the season for the conference with the best wrestling teams in the nation. It’s the best the sport has to offer — in some ways better than the national championships — and it’s being contested in one of the sport’s biggest and most passionate hotbeds: Happy Valley.
While wrestling may never reach a level of national prominence and merit the kind of big-time media attention some fans believe it should have, that really does not matter. Excellence can stand on its own and not need external validation.
This week, The Athletic correctly cited the Penn State wrestling program as perhaps the best current dynasty in college sports. Enjoy it.
As sports create and feed their own followings on social media, on paid sites and with sport-focused outlets, the attention level might not be as broad, but it’s no less valuable than what could be provided by a bigger platform. And the accomplishments are no less meaningful. Heck, maybe they’re more valuable because true fans really feel part of something special.
Fans can connect, engage and follow. They can consume, share and support. All of it makes wresting special. It makes this weekend special. And it makes this event special — especially as Penn State uses it to make some history at home and begin its march toward another national championship. Enjoy it.
Seriously … just Enjoy, Enjoy!
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