Blue White Illustrated

SPRING FEVER After months of indoor preparation, PSU gets set to go public in the annual Blue-White Game | T he snow started falling just as Bill O���Brien began his news conference. By the time he was done talking and everyone had filed out of the Beaver Stadium media room, the roads were a mess and campus was barely visible. Looking out at that vast white tableau, it seemed as though spring practice was still months away. But in reality, the drills were set to begin in a matter of hours. They started on the afternoon of March 18, not at the outdoor Lasch Building fields where players and coaches would no doubt have preferred to be, but inside the warm, dry confines of Holuba Hall, where they were able to take shelter from the Winter That Would Not End. To say that central Pennsylvania���s past few months have been harsh would be a vast understatement. The region has dealt with frigid cold, high winds and heavier-than-expected snow, sometimes all at once, leading to extreme winter blahs and even calls for Punxsutawney Phil���s execution following a Groundhog Day prediction that turned out to be pathetically offbase. Rodents, it turns out, are bad at meteorology. It didn���t help matters that the Nittany Lions and their devoted fan following were forbidden from taking their usual holiday getaway to some sunny tourist destination in Florida or California. The NCAA���s bowl ban only intensified the gloom ��� heck, even Texas would have sufficed in a year like this ��� but rather than sulk, the Lions went back to work, holing up in THE GAME AT A GLANCE WHEN Noon, April 20 WHERE Beaver Stadium TV/RADIO The Big Ten Network will carry the Blue-White Game live beginning at noon. There will also be radio coverage of the game via the Penn State Sports Network. PARKING/ADMISSION Free (Parking lots will open at 8 a.m.; Gates A, B, C and E will open at 10:30 a.m.) AUTOGRAPH SESSION A ���OneTeam��� autograph session, featuring student-athletes from a variety of Penn State teams will take place from 9 to 10:30 a.m. in the area west of Beaver Stadium near the music stage.

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