Penn State Sports Magazine
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M A R C H 2 0 2 5 7 3 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M back in a month, if we were able to get back in six weeks, in two months, what- ever the time period was, and we started breaking it out," Franklin said. After a series of fits and starts, the Big Ten ultimately decided to begin its sea- son in late October without any fans in attendance. It was a much more conser- vative approach than the other Power Five conferences took, and it resulted in some bizarre spec- tacles. Penn State concluded its 4-5 campaign by routing Illinois, 56-21, in a snow-cov- ered but otherwise empty Beaver Sta- dium in late December. The atmosphere that night was quiet and haunting, but as unusual as it was, the 2020 fall season started college athletics on a path back to normalcy. Four months later, in lieu of a spring game, PSU staged a couple of open scrim- mages with limited attendance. The fol- lowing fall, the crowds returned. When Penn State welcomed Ball State on Sept. 11, there were 105,323 fans on hand, the best attendance for a home opener in 13 years. "It was awesome," Franklin said follow- ing his team's 44-13 win. "It was emo- tional, to be honest with you. Thursday night, you start seeing the RVs coming into town, which is cool. Friday, you felt the electricity in town. Saturday, driving the blue buses from the hotel over to the stadium and the welcome that we got was unbelievable. "I thought the environment was great in here. This is the best opening home- game attendance we've had since 2008, and I am very appreciative of that." 'UNCHARTED TERRITORY' In the end, Penn State didn't suffer the financial catastrophe that some had en- visioned. PSU still has 31 varsity teams, bankrolled in large part by the school's share of an $8 billion media rights deal the Big Ten signed in 2022. Far from scaling back its ambitions, Penn State has been on a spending spree lately. It recently made defensive coor- dinator Jim Knowles the highest paid as- sistant coach in college football with a reported annual guaranteed salary of $3.1 million, and that's barely a rounding error compared to the other new item on PSU's balance sheet. That, of course, would be the $700 million overhaul of Beaver Stadium that's now underway — the biggest capital proj- ect in school history. Meanwhile, pre- dictions that con- ferences would be forced to downsize have proven laughably off-base. With the addition of four new West Coast schools, the Big Ten's footprint now stretches 2,800 miles. For better or for worse, teams are traveling more than they ever did be- fore the pandemic. Of course, there are still some fis- cal threats ahead, notably the prospect of revenue-sharing in college sports, a change that will affect schools' balance sheets in untold ways. Still, the world of 2025 is very different from the one that people were imagining five years ago. When Cooper and his team headed back to the hotel after their loss to Miami, all they knew was that they weren't going to be playing baseball for quite a while. They spent the night in Oxford, then got up the next morning, ate breakfast and piled onto their bus for the trip back to State College. Before heading out, Cooper told his players, "This is uncharted territory. There is something going on in the world right now, and this is what needs to be done." Cooper would end up coaching PSU for another three seasons before returning to his alma mater, Miami (Fla.), as director of program development. On March 12 of this year, the Nittany Lions baseball team — now led by head coach Mike Gambino — will be playing the second game of a two-game road se- ries against Georgetown at Capital One Park in Tysons, Va. And, barring any fur- ther uncharted territory, the season will continue with a Big Ten weekend series at Northwestern March 14-16. ■ "Our primary focus is on holding our 31 programs and our 800-plus student-athletes together and finding a way as Penn Staters and as a Penn State community to come through this on the other side." F O R M E R A T H L E T I C S D I R E C T O R S A N D Y B A R B O U R Throughout the pandemic, athletics director Sandy Barbour was committed to preserving all 31 Penn State varsity pro- grams. Barbour, who later retired in the summer of 2022, said PSU's large athletics program was "in our DNA." PHOTO COURTESY PENN STATE ATHLETICS