Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1464375
2 0 M A Y 2 0 2 2 BACK BACK BY POPULAR BY POPULAR DEMAND DEMAND B ill O'Brien said the quiet part loud back in 2013 when, after watching star tailback Zach Zwinak fracture his wrist on a short carry, he suggested that the Blue-White Game was a bad idea. "You can't get your best guys hurt in the spring game," the Nittany Lions' second-year head coach fumed. "I think people who come back [for Blue-White Weekend] have to understand the situa- tion that we're in. We cannot get our best players hurt in the Blue-White Game. That's when you get labeled a dumb coach." Few coaches anywhere would have dis- agreed with that sentiment, and many might have quietly endorsed his subse- quent suggestion to downsize the spring game into a scrimmage of some sort. But spring games at big-time football schools like Penn State have turned into alumni reunion weekends, and no coach wants to run afoul of his fans or his administration or the local business community by sug- gesting that the annual practice-capping exhibitions should disappear. So, they don't say what O'Brien said. But then a not-so-funny thing hap- pened seven years after O'Brien vented over Zwinak's injury: The Blue-White Game actually did disappear. The pan- demic ended spring practice in 2020 before it even began, and when the in- trasquad game returned in 2021 amid a downturn in COVID cases, it wasn't re- M A T T H E R B | M A T T @ B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M After a three-year interruption, the Blue-White Game returns to cap the Nittany Lions' spring football practice sessions. Here's what to watch.