Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1276571
be the last game of the evening," he said. "It was 6 p.m. and everybody had been there since 8, so people were leaving after those hours had piled up. By the time we played, there weren't a lot of people there. But we were going hard, playing the game simply because of how much we loved it. "I love the game, I want to play hard regardless. The film is still going to get sent out. We still want to win, and I've still got to do what I've got to do for my brothers. It's easy whenever I think about it like that." A lot of players expressed similar sen- timents, but in the weeks and months that followed, it became clear that those sorts of concessions might not be enough. At the very least, the game day environment was going to have to be radically different both in- side and outside the sta- dium. Penn State athletic director Sandy Barbour said in early July that there were going to be "restrictions on lots of things," including the team's entrance into Beaver Stadium, where throngs of fans typically line up along Curtain Road to greet those famous blue school buses as they approach. "How student-athletes enter, both the home and visiting teams, what other people they have access to or don't have access to – that's all going to need to be part of the plan," Barbour said. "One thing I know about Penn State fans is that they're incredibly passionate. I know those who aren't able to get into the sta- dium are going to want to tailgate, they're going to want to be there for the team arrival, or any of the standard, traditional Penn State activi- ties. That may or may not be possible. All of that is still to be seen and [de- pends on] what conditions we're in when we do start to play." As downbeat as they may have sounded, there was an undercurrent of optimism in Barbour's words, predi- >> WELCOMING PARTY Fans prepare to greet the Nittany Lions' buses prior to the team's White Out game against Michigan last sea- son. Photo by Steve Manuel