WE ARE PENN STATE!
When I was young, my father was always busy during the spring, summer and fall. He didn’t work a lot during the winter break, he would always pull me out of school, and we would do a road trip through the United States to see some Hockey, NFL, and some baseball games. Some of my best memories were of those times and it is why I still follow sports to this day. In 2002, his mother and his sister died and I had a bit of time so I got some tickets for Michigan State at Penn State in a cold November day.
The drive was about 9 or more hours down to University Park, Pennsylvania. The weather was cold and a bit wet. The trees were stripped of their leaves, the grass was brown and the ground was soft from the rain. We saw the stadium and I was wow’ed by the size of it. It holds 106,570 people to watch an American football game. We parked in field and it was a long hike into the stadium. Some of the people had been tailgating since the morning. A lot of the people were dressed in hunting gear. I assumed a lot of them were hunting in the morning and then a football game at night. We got there around 2 pm and the kick off was around 4 pm. The place was packed with people of all ages.
We walked around the town, which was essentially the university. The place was dead. Everyone was near the football stadium. We took a few pictures then went back to the stadium. We sat in the high high high rails and it almost felt like we were outside the stadium. There were benches in our section but there was no sitting since the crowd stood from the time of the kick off to the final score. A wall of sound saying “We are Penn State!” was deafening. The crowds were amazing.
With the scandal that is going on in Penn State now, I remember this time and the time with my father was great. I hope those who have done wrong are punished and I hope some others can have the same experience I had in the future.