Blue White Illustrated

October 2022

Penn State Sports Magazine

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O C T O B E R 2 0 2 2 51 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M E D I T O R I A L MATT HERB matt@bluewhiteonline.com B ack when he was an assistant at Penn State in the 1950s, Joe Paterno at- tended a team meeting in which head coach Rip Engle announced that the uni- versity was planning to disassemble Bea- ver Field and move it to a parcel of empty land about a mile to the east. Paterno couldn't believe what he was hearing. The football program was mak- ing progress, and now fans were going to be asked to trudge to a remote field beyond the outskirts of campus. After the meeting, he pulled Engle aside. "Coach," he said, "that would be a big mistake. You're going to destroy Penn State football." Many years later, Paterno re- counted that meeting at one of his weekly pressers. You could hear the self-deprecation in his voice. His fears, of course, had been wildly off-base. Far from destroying the program, the decision to relocate Beaver Field prior to the 1960 season had turned out to be one of the most farsighted moves in Penn State history. It gave the 30,000-seat facility all the room it needed to grow, and as the pro- gram developed into a national power in the early years of the Paterno era, the stadium grew right along with it. "That's how smart I was," Paterno chuckled. "That was 75,000 seats ago." In the not-too-distant future, Penn State will likely have to make another big decision about what to do with its most storied athletics facility. Anyone who passes through its turnstiles knows that it's a spartan venue in many respects, not just in comparison to the gaudy show- places that have sprung up around the NFL in recent years but also relative to many of Penn State's Power Five peers. What's more, new athletics director Patrick Kraft has raised concerns about the facility's long-term structural in- tegrity. "What I have to figure out is, is it safe?" Kraft told reporters at Big Ten Media Days in July. "How long can we keep it stand- ing? That's the question. If it's going to fall down, then you've got to figure it out. We're going to do everything we can to keep that thing up and running." Penn State has been working steadily to upgrade its playing facilities elsewhere on campus. Panzer Stadium opened in 2019, giving the men's and women's lacrosse programs an impressive new home at a cost of $8.4 million, while the Field Hockey Complex is undergoing a $12.8 million overhaul that is slated for completion next year. PSU is also spending on football. The Lasch Building is a construction site these days, with $48 million having been earmarked for various improvement projects. Renovating or replacing Beaver Sta- dium is going to be exponentially more difficult and expensive than those other projects, however. When Texas A&M rebuilt Kyle Field, the project ended up costing $484 mil- lion — and that was in 2015 dollars. It's not as if construction costs have held steady in the seven years since the Ag- gies' new home field was finished. Those costs will surely continue to climb in the years ahead, meaning that the longer PSU waits, the higher the price tag will be. Making matters even more compli- cated is the question of just how much stadium Penn State requires. When you spend the kind of money that PSU is inevitably going to have to spend, it's es- sential that you end up with a facility that will still meet the university's needs in 50 or 60 years. But what are those needs? Will Penn State still require 106,000 seats a generation from now? Continual improvements in home entertainment tech have been blamed for declining at- tendance in numerous sports, at both the college and pro levels. Lots of people, it turns out, are quite happy to forsake the communal experience of being in a rau- cous stadium if it means they don't have to sit in gridlocked traffic and pay for parking and concessions. Will that erosion continue? An even bigger unknown is whether football will still be the national pastime half a century from now. It might seem silly to pose that question just weeks after the Big Ten signed a $7 billion media rights deal, but youth participation has been on the decline for years, due largely to parental fears about the sport's long-term health risks. According to a recent story in The New York Times, the number of kids play- ing high school football shrank by more than 10 percent from 2008 to 2018. If the talent pool continues to dwindle, the on-field product will eventually start to suffer, especially in parts of the country where the decline is more pronounced. A Utah State researcher quoted in the Times' story suggested that football may eventually turn into a regional sport like lacrosse or ice hockey. It's against that muddled backdrop that Penn State must make what will likely be some of the most momentous decisions in the history of its athletics program. We don't yet know what di- rection the school's administration will take, or more precisely, what direction it can afford to take. But we do know this: The last time it had to make a major de- cision about the viability of its stadium, PSU made the right call. Can it do so again? ■ Penn State has expanded Beaver Stadium eight times since it was moved to its present location prior to the 1960 season. With a capacity of 106,572, it is the second-largest venue in college football, trailing only Michigan Stadium (107,601). PHOTO BY STEVE MANUEL Decisions Await While PSU Ponders Stadium's Future VARSITY VIEWS

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